First posted to the
internet: Friday 5th August 2011. Last updated: 1st January 2019.

- Spoilers included at times -

I have
spent many, many happy hours watching Doctor Who stories over and over again and I certainly
don't want to spend the same number of hours writing about them, so here it
is, small, sparsely worded, vacuous and trivial.

Where stories /
episodes don't exist my views are based on soundtracks and more likely the
brilliant reconstructions that have been created by dedicated fans. I have attempted, where possible, to
spare any kind of effort in cobbling this together.

When I re-watch a story I often update my views in
the text below but generally leave in my original scribblings so that it
builds up a history of how my views change over time.

For ease, the original series run is numbered Series 1 to 26 and the revived
series is numbered Season 1, Season 2, etc.

Scores: 5 is average, 6 to 10 are good to excellent,
with 1 to 4 more Myrka than Dalek.

A very mysterious
first episode gives way to a sombre story set in the stone age. An absolute
classic. This was the very first appearance of the Dr, and is a fantastic start to
the series. It was directed by Warris Hussein who also directed my
joint all-time
favourite film Melody, starring Mark Lester, Jack Wild and Tracey Hyde.

10

2

The Daleks

A surprisingly early re-imagining of the series. A
great adventure.

Update Sunday 1st June 2014: I watched this
again a few weeks ago and concluded that it's a story of two unequal
halves: the first four episodes are excellent and the last 3 meander on
and on with the long journey taken to get into the back entrance of the
Dalek city. It's beautifully made though and the Daleks are brilliant.

8 (prev 10)

3

The Edge of Destruction

This story makes as much sense even if watched in
the wrong order (as per Galaxy Channel's Doctor Who Weekend 1990). Dull as
ditchwater.

A 2 part story
that feels longer than many with a higher episode count.

Two episodes of pointless arguments
and a potential homicidal stabbing incident involving a pair of scissors
could have been avoided if only the Tardis had had a decent enough error
message system in place at that time to warn that a button on the console
had become stuck.

Update Saturday 20th September 2014: Having
watched this again today I think my criticism of this is based on the
wrong assumption that the arguments / paranoia prevalent throughout are
entirely unnecessary in light of the reason, a stuck button upon the
Tardis console. It's more that in light of the mystery / strange
happenings, it's the revelation that it's a stuck button being the cause
that is out of place; it's the wrong reason for such happenings and not
that impressive.

What is impressive are Carole Ann Ford's
performance when holding the scissors up to both Ian and Barbara, and the
Dr's back-to-the-console-with-mood-lighting speech in part 2, both of
which are stand-out moments from the series' history.

I also realised (well after most people I
suspect!) that this is the first time the Tardis is shown to be more than
a mere space / time machine, perhaps a sentient being in its own right. I
also had not before picked up the fact that the power source of the Tardis
being underneath the central column was established in this story and was
referred used to advance the plot to two stories many years later in
Boom Town and The Parting of the Ways.

I still take issue with such things as the
four main characters all having had some kind of memory loss for what
seems no reason and for the Dr and Susan having pains on the back of their
necks (similarly unexplained) and have assigned these unexplanations to
the appendix titled 'Earlier Examples' to the rapidly growing file
titled 'Photo in the Children's Home and Other Unexplained Moffat
Mysteries'.

This is a much better story than I had ever
given it credit for; it's of interest even if it has a decidedly trivial
resolution.

6th April 2013: I watched
the reconstruction and Air Lock episode that is on The Aztecs
Special Edition DVD today: I enjoyed this albeit it has one of the
flimsiest plots to appear in Doctor Who to date. I don't understand why a
full reconstruction wasn't completed however, but I enjoyed what there
was.

5 (prev 3)

2

Mission to the Unknown

Wowser what a good start to an epic.

9

3

The Myth Makers

Captivating.

7

4

The Daleks' Masterplan

Starts of brilliantly, goes off the rails, rallies at
the end.

8

5

The Massacre

If you watch EastEnders for anger and arguments, watch
this, it's non-stop. It's also non-stop boredom.

2

6

The Ark

Great fun, love those Monoids.

7

7

The Celestial Toymaker

Over-rated nonsense.

3

8

The Gunfighters

Underrated nonsense.

7

9

The Savages

S'ok.

5

10

The War Machines

Nicely filmed intelligent story with chunky robots; 21
years later and there'd been little improvement in chunky robot design by
the time Paradise Towers was broadcast.

6th April 2013:
Okay, here's my theory on why The Doctor is called 'Doctor Who' at times
in this story...

Known facts are that Torchwood is created in 1879 during Queen
Victoria's reign (2006's Tooth and Claw) with at least part of its
existence relating to keeping an eye out for The Doctor. Captain Jack
Harkness uses a time bracelet to go back in time to find The Doctor after
the events of 2005's The Parting of the Ways but ends up earlier in
time than he expected. Stuck there, he works for a fledgling Torchwood.

Theory: Whilst working for Torchwood and whilst Torchwood
accumulates information on The Doctor, a large project file is created
titled 'Doctor Who' as in the very obvious and often-spoken question
'Doctor Who?'. Wotan, a super-intelligent computer, is able to hack
into any computer in the world, does so, and is able to retrieve, or cause
to be retrieved, secret information on The Doctor. Wotan however reads the
project title literally and calls the Doctor 'Doctor Who'. All right,
Wotan's not all that intelligent.

It basically doesn't bother me that in this story he is sometimes
called 'Doctor Who', I believe it's generally likely that fictional
characters / computers in the Doctor's omniverse could easily make that
mistake in the absence of all facts.

As to the episodes themselves, the characters of Ben and Polly are
excellent and this is a marvellous introductory story for them. I only
wish they'd been allowed to stay on longer than The Faceless Ones.

Update: Sunday 8th November 2015. I finally watched the DVD for the
first time and apart from realising that nothing (much) would have altered
whether the Dr Ben & Polly had turned up or not I thought it stood up
really well. The Cybermen look sinister and even though the voices perhaps
don't match the image it is a distinctive voice that reinforces their
de-humanisation. The animation for episode 4 was effective and preferable
to the type of telepic reconstruction presented with The Underwater
Menace.

In terms of story this must, at the time of first (last) broadcast,
have seemed a vastly different kind of story to those that had gone before
(well, maybe War Machines aside) and for the first time had the
whole of Earth truly in peril (well, maybe Dalek Invasion of Earth
aside). It's highly intelligent and excellently filmed.

This is a story of firsts: first Cybermen, first regeneration, and
it's written by a person who'd never written for the series before; that's
incredibly impressive. It's always the boss writer who writes regeneration
stories since the series' return in 2005 so this was, back then, even
without the then production team perhaps knowing it, a bit of a gamble.
It's a triumph.

Long before the 7th Doctor, this Doctor knew in advance what was
going to happen at this location at this point in time. He knew of the twin planet, he knew Earth would be
visited. He must have known of the Cybermen and of their place in Earth
history. Where once the Dr would have walked away (it's Ian who wants to
help the Thals in The Daleks) the Doctor is very much intending to
be involved and is determined to help. He knows that Mondas will be
destroyed yet he tries to warn the Cybermen, to re-write that line of history:
what could the Cybermen had been had they listened to the Dr; this is what
the Dr is trying to achieve.
This is a Doctor who had met Ian and Barbara and been influenced by them;
before, the Dr wouldn't have helped, but Ian showed him it was right to do
so; before, the Dr wouldn't have interfered with history but Barbara
questioned why not as they had the opportunity to do so.

By the time of his regeneration this is a very different Doctor from
the one first seen in An Unearthly Child, though where humour had crept into
the Dr's character
over the three series, in this one the Dr is deadly serious. Even Ben and
Polly sense they're in the middle of something more serious than usual, the acting of
the characters imply they're only just learning how mysterious the Dr is
and it's all done so well.

The regeneration is brilliant and at the same time sad, it's exactly
like the Dr is dying and this must have been quite scary for children
watching at the time. What exists of the regeneration sequence is quite
haunting and is a tremendous farewell to a great First Doctor.

8 (prev 7)

3

The Power of the Daleks

One of the best stories ever, with a nicely oppressive
atmosphere.

10

4

The Highlanders

I struggle with this one.

4

5

The Underwater Menace

Good grief !

Update: Sunday 1st November 2015

I like it now, it's got a simple plot sure and the fish people look
more psychedelic than fishy but it's got a plot one can follow and it's
not all about the companions. Contrast that with more recent Who which is
all about the companion and / or the Dr and of gimmicks and this one is ok
by that standard.

Plot on a pinhead: Zaroff wants to put Atlantis above the sea once
more but his plan could crack the Earth in two. The Dr turns up but likely
didn't need to as Zaroff's plan goes wrong anyway. I think.

Joseph Furst is actually good in this I think, save for that
line to the that ending of that episode but he plays Zaroff
with conviction: thank crikey episode 2 turned up because it gives a
better view of his acting. Yes, I like his performance now. It's great to
see the episode anyway, and I hope the rest of this one, as well as all
the others, turn up.

The DVD itself is good and bad: the episodes are wonderfully
restored and sharp, and the extras that were created for the original
release some time ago are fine and dandy. The reconstructions of episodes
1 and 4 however are lacklustre in comparison to these, having been
constructed quickly and with the instructions not to use anything but the
telepics in the order that they were taken. I'm assuming this was so that
the long-time-delayed release could be rush-released as a response to
growing fan irritation at the lack of release.

It wouldn't have hurt BBC Worldwide to have kept fans in the loop as
to what if anything had been planned for this release over the years and
it's likely due to lack of news that fan irritation grew. Had Worldwide
wanted to take their time and produce a top-knot release they could have
said so but silence was golden. So the inference was that there was going
to be no release. Hence the fan petition, hence the rush release.

One doubts that Worldwide were going to release this at all, they'd
spent money on animators who went bust, they seemed to have no other
(cheap?) animators to go to but ruling that the reconstructions should be
made with minimum effort to rush release this smacks of sour grapes on
their behalf. The fans have had a go at us, we'll give them what they want
but we're spending no more time on this.

So it's good to finally get all the currently existing classic
episodes on DVD and a disappointment that BBC Worldwide continued to treat
this particular release and the fans in a highly dismissive way.

5 (prev 3)

6

The Moonbase

Gripping.

8

7

The Macra Terror

Excellent idea but seems to last forever.

5

8

The Faceless Ones

Too long for such a boring idea (doppelgangers indeed;
yeesh, when will that corny idea stop being used?)

2

9

The Evil of the Daleks

A surprisingly simple and over-rated story. Episodes
1, 2, 6
and 7 are very good though.

13th April 2013: I watched a reconstruction of this story recently: the
first episode had little substance but I enjoyed the rest of the story.
It's a very different kind of Doctor Who story from any era of the show,
it starts off as an ITC adventure serial (with a foreign dictator, guns,
blackmail) and little sci-fi, then becomes a bit more sci-fi later on
(underground nuclear shelter, futuristic machinery). The main basic plot
(evil villain using science to cause earthquakes) is submerged beneath the
adventure plot and is highly refreshing. The change of setting to places
outside of Britain is also refreshing. Patrick Troughton's Salamander
didn't interest me at first but by episode 3 was looking forward to his
appearances. This story is simply great fun. It also features Bill Kerr
and his performance is immensely rewarding to the viewer. There was some
padding though, albeit great fun: episode 3's plot can be summed up as
"Down in the kitchens Victoria offers to make cakes but is told to peel
the spuds instead".

7 (prev 2)

5

The Web of Fear

Superb.

10

6

Fury from the Deep

Absolute classic.

Update Sunday
24th August 2014:

Oh no it isn't.

I found this to be a slow-moving incident-light adventure about some
gas creature wanting to take over the world without feeling the need to
kill anyone when I watched the reconstruction recently.

And after several episodes of Victoria whining away about wanting a
different life to the one she had with the Dr and Jamie, I wasn't all that
upset when she stayed behind at the end. Had I been the Dr or Jamie I'd
have booted her out.

5 (prev 10)

7

The Wheel in Space

So-so.

Update Sunday 24th August
2014:

Oh no it isn't.

I watched the superb Loose Cannon reconstruction recently and
it brought back memories of watching this as a kid in the late '60s and I
really enjoyed it. There aren't many Cybermen around but the human
characters are well cast and well written so that you get to like them all
and a nice cosy warm feeling of nostalgia more than raises this from a
so-so story to a great one. I'll be watching this one again and again.

Wendy Padbury as Zoe is simply wonderful, I liked her a lot as
a kid and I find that Zoe's still a compelling character now, she's not a
scream queen and she has a light, refreshing air about her.

Mostly excellent. This is
probably the earliest Doctor Who story that I can remember watching
as a child.

Update Saturday 20th September 2014:

Oh no it isn't. I go back to The Ice Warriors albeit only
with a hazy recollection of watching it. I'd certainly seen Deborah
Watling play Victoria the year before.

8

3

The Invasion

Oh yes, this is what we want.

10

4

The Krotons

Annoyingly wrong in many ways but
highly watchable.

Update Saturday 20th September 2014:

The scene with the Dr taking the intelligence test is among my
favourite scenes of all time.

6

5

The Seeds of Death

Good stuff.

7

6

The Space Pirates

Such a wrong story to do.

Update Saturday 20th September 2014:

I've watched the Loose Canon reconstruction recently and
whereas the Target Book adaptation had failed to bring back any memories
of watching this as a child, the reconstruction brought it all back. I can
remember the ship splitting into compartments and believing that the
actors were actually inside one of them.

I liked Lisa Daniely as Madeleine Issigri at the time, sporting the
metal headpiece and she is still wonderful now. I would have liked Milo
Clancey's character as a kid too but that character simply grates now. A
cowboy in space? With pirates in space? Both concepts are corny and
contradict the realistic model shots effectively used throughout the
story.

The story itself is overlong and overall dull in spite of a good
cast.

The three leads are wonderful as ever though, Troughton, Hines and
Padbury being a particularly favourite combination of mine. As a kid I'd
liked Deborah Watling as Victoria but Wendy Padbury played the better
companion, as Zoe Herriot would show herself to be intelligent and not
simply scream / whine at the camera.

Even the three leads couldn't ultimately save this one from being
dull.

The Autons were the
only Dr Who monsters that frightened me as a child. A fantastic first story for Jon
Pertwee's doctor.

Updated 19th April
2014: I watched the Blu-Ray DVD recently and still can't quite take in
just how brilliant this story is. It's one of my top three and it is so
well made, possibly the best made story ever.

I loved the tribute specials to Jon Pertwee and Caroline John on
this DVD, both were professionally made to a level I'd not seen before for
Doctor Who DVD extras and along with the simple menu structure of the DVD
was the first time I felt that we DVD-buying fans were being treated as
adults first, fans second. Magnificent.

6th April 2013: I recently watched this on DVD and was unusually
disappointed by the picture quality. It hadn't been a great colour release
on video back in the '90s and this didn't look much (if any) better. I
wish, in hind-sight, that the existing, sharp, black and white version
that appeared on UK Gold many years ago had been included with this
release. I did enjoy watching the story though.

6

2

The Mind of Evil

Likeable if long for what it's about.

Updated 19th April 2014: I finally saw the colour version
recently and this is a very well made story with an intelligent script. It
would have worked better as a four-parter, and is likely of a style that
would have fitted in well with the previous series but it does hold
interest for the most part.

This, Spearhead From Space and Genesis of the Daleks are my favourites of all
time.

This one tops the
other two though, I like the fact that the Daleks are kept behind the scenes for a lot of
it, I love their slaves the Ogrons and I think the Earth Controller (played by Aubrey
Woods) is one of the best characters to ever appear in Dr Who.

10

2

The Curse of Peladon

Even power cuts in 1973 couldn't save me from having to
watch at least some of this story. I like it more now than I did then, but
not much.

4

3

The Sea Devils

Another of the real classics of the series. Good monsters and
the best story to feature the Master.

10

4

The Mutants

I love this one.

9

5

The Time Monster

The most boring story of
all time.

This was the
first story I watched that seemed to outstay it's welcome long after the budget ran
out and long after the 100th long and terminally dull lab scene.
I would cite Terminus and Ribos Operation as even more boring stories
than this but they do everyone the favour of being two episodes shorter than
this one.

Entertaining and loveable. A jolly romp with
good monsters (Gell Guards), a good villain (Omega) and a lot of humour.

9

2

Carnival of Monsters

A story that's grown on me a lot since I saw it first
in 1973.

8 (prev 7)

3

Frontier in Space

Not as dull as some people would have it.

7

4

Planet of the Daleks

A nice romp.

7

5

The Green Death

One of the strongest stories of the entire series from
'63 onwards. One to appeal to minors and miners alike. Contains
very memorable giant maggots and
is
the last story to feature my favourite companion Jo Grant (played by Katy Manning).

Updated
19th April 2014: The first 3 episodes are excellent, the 4th part has the
Doctor dressed as a cleaning woman and is not so excellent, and parts 5 &
6 have too much Boss, too little maggots. It's still one of the best
though. You get the sense of Jo growing up and growing away from the
Doctor. In retrospect I wish Professor Jones had been introduced in an
earlier story then got hitched to Jo in this one. It's still very well
done though, you get a sense that Jo will be leaving right from the
beginning, it's as important a plot point as the one with the maggots. Jo
has very few scenes with the Doctor throughout the story and this helps to
set the scene for her departure. The time and intelligence taken in this
story to set up Jo's leaving is a complete contrast to the tacked on
leaving scenes for Sarah Jane Smith, Leela and Mel for instance. Jo's
leaving story remains the best of the leaving stories.

The character of Linx set such a high standard as a
Sontaran that successive production teams have always failed in utilising
Sontarans that match him in any way, not even The Sontaran Experiment (and
it's the same actor). More importantly, it always seems that they try to
steer so far away from this blueprint that you'd think they've never seen
this story (and they blooming well should do).

6th April 2013:
Ha! Nice to be proven wrong. Strax who appears as of A Good Man Goes
To War is simply brilliant too.

9

2

Invasion of the Dinosaurs

The special effects always seem to get bad press but
they're good enough for me as the actual plot is brilliant. One of my
all-time favourite scenes appears in this story: The Brigadier standing up
to General Finch in episode 6 and ordering Benton to shoot anyone who
stops him is simply awesome. It's brilliant in that it's the only time?
that the Brigadier steps outside of his fairly rigid adherence to command
chain and duty.

9

3

Death to the Daleks

Loved this on transmission and struggle with it now.

10th June 2012: How wrong..?! It's extremely brilliant! The Doctor
having an alliance with the Daleks? Incredible! New weapons? Excellent!
Encore! Encore!

8 (prev 5)

4

The Monster of Peladon

Found this dull on transmission until the Ice Warriors
turned up. I like it a lot now.

8

5

Planet of the Spiders

Incredibly strong story. The last Jon
Pertwee story, this features giant spiders and is fantastic.

One of the best-designed set of aliens ever, why have
we never seen them since??? Except for that BBV film with the nudity (and
then only for a few seconds, unlike the nudity of which there's plenty).

6th April 2013: They did get a small return (not in their real form
though) in 2012's The Power of Three and I loved the fact it
happened.

Update Saturday 20th September 2014: The also returned in 2013's Day of
the Doctor but were submerged beneath a load of tosh so as to have been
side-lined.

9

2

Planet of Evil

I dis-liked this one for many years but grew to like it
enough not to mind when the same basic plot turned up years later in the
episode "42".

8

3

Pyramids of Mars

This one never seems as good as how I thought of it
when watching it on transmission. Still, it's ok.

7

4

The Android Invasion

Not a strong entry in the series.

3

5

The Brain of Morbius

Dis-liked this for years but now appreciate it for the
moody story it is.

8

6

The Seeds of Doom

I don't get why people like this one so much.

Updated 19th April 2014: I watched this for the third time only
recently and much as I still detest Tom Baker's unwarranted grouchy / rude
performance in this particular story it is a tour de force for Tony
Beckley and John Challis as Harrison Chase and Scorby.

The story seems more of an Emma-Peel-starring fantasy episode of
The Avengers than Doctor Who but has some charm. Compared to
Terror of the Zygons which began this particular series it is a
complete let-down. 6 episodes on a story about a vicious plant? One that's
supposed to be a big threat to Earth but which simply gets blown up
towards the end of part 6? Not great.

Tony Beckley and John Challis play characters that are so well
written though. They don't play a traditional / typical combination of
boss and henchman, both have their own intelligence and are more like
business partners. What is great is that John Challis' character Scorby
holds the reins in the first two episodes, making decisions independent
from Beckley's Harrison Chase and remains an intelligent character once
back in England. Harrison Chase is in the background of the first two
episodes and becomes prominent from the third episode. It's very well
written. Scorby is the thinking henchman and he is an enormous change from
the norm.

So, a silly story with a non-too-threatening plant but made up for
by Chase and Scorby.

Tom Baker's portrayal of the Doctor is a million miles away from the
character he plays in the rest of this series and is barely recognisable
as the same character from the previous series. He is so unlikeable in
this story that one has far more empathy towards characters like Scorby:
it is the Doctor one hopes will get wiped out by the Krynoid. Had the
Krynoid been a serious threat to Earth then perhaps the Doctor would have
had reason to be a bit cranky, but the Krynoid is of absolutely no threat
to Earth at all and Baker's performance is simply horrible. The charm in
this story belongs to Harrison Chase. I imagine it will be some time
before I watch this one again! It is purely because of Baker's performance
that I don't like this story, hence the low esteem (and marks out of ten)
that I hold for it.

I watched this again recently and the core story is intelligent even
if we're faced with a regressed civilisation VS advanced civilisation-type
plot. This was a story that upon first viewing I disliked very much,
featuring natives, invisible monsters, artificial jungle set and Leela. I
didn't warm to Leela until she left the series, and in fact it was many
years later that I realised just how good Louise Jameson was in the role.
I generally had a downer on the series by the time Elisabeth Sladen left
anyway so no matter who took over I'd have found difficulty warming to.
After Pyramids of Mars I didn't like any stories on first viewing
until The Robots of Death, and after that one it was The
Sunmakers followed by The Leisure Hive. Yes I'd carried on
watching but I didn't enjoy much of what I saw. The Horns of Nimon
almost saw me give up altogether but The Leisure Hive brought me
right back.

I'm saying this to put everything into perspective, because time
brings new perspective and over the years I've warmed to the stories I
disliked back then, and I've warmed to Louise Jameson & Mary Tamm very
much over that same time. I liked Lalla Ward from the second she appeared
as Romana even if I didn't like her first five adventures when I first saw
them but I judged Louise and Mary poorly back on first viewing, and the
fact they only made 15 stories between them is in retrospect very sad.
Louise is simply brilliant and just as I underrated The Face of Evil
back then, so I underrated Louise, and following her, Mary.

I really like the Leela stories, some of them are near classics, at
least one is a classic, and I find them all very entertaining. Season 15
in particular started to appeal to me back in the '80s when I read Target
Books' adaptations of those stories and once I saw grainy black and white
copies obtained via the Fan circuit grew to admire them. The Leela era as
a whole is underrated but for me is as good as the best of other eras. I
would never have said that back in the '70s.

Louise Jameson's Leela has become one of my very favourite
companions over time, her acting is so believable and her emotions are
played with conviction. Such it is with this story which gets better and
better each time I see it.

First time around all I could see was a predictable corny Shaman of
a village having undue influence over his fellow natives but this story is
far more clever than that. The basic plot that the tribe are descendants
of a crashed spaceship with words, phrases and names that have been
altered throughout the years is just clever.

The idea of the Dr fixing a computer but which in fact turns it
insane is another clever idea. If this were made today just think of the
angst the Dr would go through in knowing he'd created a monster; it's
underplayed here, perhaps as if the Dr doesn't really want
those around him to fully appreciate what his own previous involvement has
wrought, even if they are pursuing him as 'The Evil One'. Or he's too
afraid to face up to it himself. Either way he comes up against a very
dangerous enemy because half that enemy is himself. The use of Tom Baker's
face as Xoanon along with the various voices make this a very chilling
enemy indeed (the end of Part 3 is suitably fantastic) and one I now wish would return. A tormented Computer playing
havoc with civilisations is a very scary concept.

So when did the Dr first meet Xoanon? I can remember that people
used to say it was set at at time near the 4th Dr's first appearance,
that, soon after regenerating from Pertwee's Dr and before going off with
Sarah and Harry to The Ark In Space, that Tombo had gone off in the
Tardis all disorientated and made a right old mess of it with Xoanon
before popping back to the Tardis for the rest of the adventure with the
Robot. This because the Dr is with Sarah & Harry much of the time
after that. Having now watched 1000s of years of the Dr's lives slip away
throughout the Moffat area another theory is possible. It could be that he
first meets Xoanon after The Deadly Assassin and prior to The
Face of Evil. Who knows how much time slipped away between those two
stories that we were not party to? Another theory is that whilst Sarah, or
Sarah & Harry were asleep in the Tardis between adventures, a nocturnal Dr
slipped away to have adventures on his own. Not interested? Ok let's move
on.

Invisible monsters, or monsters that appeared in outline only such
as those that appeared in Planet of Evil and Face of Evil
used to make me groan at the cheapness of them. I thought it was a cheap
device to use in place of more expensive rubber monsters. Now I like them because they're
rarely used, they're imaginatively used and they do make a change from rubber monsters. Also, the ones
here that look like a Zardoz-ian head with Tom Baker as the template
actually work well, it's a clever device.

The jungle works for me now too. Yes it's not the most realistic but
it's the story that counts and the jungle is only scenery for a mighty
fine story.

When it was first broadcast I didn't hold a lot of love for it, I
only noticed the prawn and the bushy eyebrows, but every time I've watched
it since then I've noticed the plot and it is a mighty fine one: small
creature controls humans into assisting it to grow to big proportions to
take over the universe. Great stuff. Watching this again recently I was
hooked on what is actually an ambitious story.

Louise Jameson as Leela is wonderful too, I'd not been to keen to
see her take over from Elisabeth Sladen at the time but she is a brilliant
character thanks to the sublime performance from Louise.

8

3

Image of the Fendahl

Very strong and highly watchable story.

Update Saturday 20th September 2014:

Still highly watchable but perhaps not quite as strong as I'd
remembered it.

When first watching this back in 1978 I had found this to be dull,
with unexciting cliffhangers for the first two episodes. The idea of a
skull being a threat didn't interest me and it all seem hokum to me at the
time.

This is a story that then grew on me, firstly when I read the Target
Books adaptation then as I got to watch it again in the late '80s. It
maintains a good and sinister atmosphere throughout the four episodes even
if we're denied a viewing of a Fendhaleen even when characters are killed
off early on.

The cast is well chosen and although Denis Lill's accent as
Fendelman comes across as hammy, Daphne Heard and Geoffrey Hinsliff's
accents as Martha and Jack are particularly well done and these are two of
my favourite characters to have appeared in the series.

Louise Jameson's Leela had not appealed to me in the '70s as a) she
wasn't Sarah and b) she never would be but as with all good things, many
years have passed and now I wish she'd stayed in the series longer as
Louise's performance is so subtle and strong that Leela is entirely
endearing. Although Leela may not have too much to do in this story Louise
nevertheless puts in an incredible performance, the way she looks at the
people she speaks too is amazing. Leela only appears in 9 stories but
she's right up there as one of the best ever companions for me.

Upon first transmission I wasn't as fond of series 13 to 17 as I had
been of series 6 to 12 but over the years series 15 has become a stand-out
series to me, even with the incalculably weak Underworld.

7 (prev 9)

4

The Sunmakers

Yes, very good.
A witty, satirical
take on tax collection.

8

5

Underworld

I watched this a week ago (at the time of writing) and
yet again, as always, I struggle to remember much about it. When I first
saw the Target book based on this story I thought it must be the first of
a new series of adventures written purely for the books. The good side to
this is that it always feels like I'm watching a newly-unearthed Tom Baker
story each time I watch it.

6th April 2013: Two years or so on
from when I last watched it, I can remember slightly more of what happens
in it so have decided to sit on the fence and give it a score of 5.

5

(Previously I
found this hard to rate)

6

The Invasion of Time

The Vardans are dreadful, the Sontarans are
disappointing. There's so much to dislike in this story but I like it
anyway.

Sunday 30th April 2017: I watched this again fairly recently and have
to remind myself that I watch this one more than a lot of 'em so there's
something about it I must like. There are certain sequences that are well
filmed. It's perhaps that it's a simple story in contrast to Genesis
that has always made it seem pale by comparison. However, I think it's a
good time-passer.

6 (prev 5 & 4)

2

City of Death

Nicely crafted and a breath of fresh air.
A very clever,
humorous tale with a realistic villain.

7 (prev 3)

3

The Creature from the Pit

Hated this one back in 1979 (and for many years
afterwards) but I have gained a lot more respect for it since watching it
on DVD. Once upon a time I would have given this story a score of 2 out of
10, but now...

7 (prev 2)

4

Nightmare of Eden

An interesting idea or two cannot mask the rubbish
creature costumes or the very silly script. This one annoys me for having
wasted its potential.

3 (prev 2)

5

The Horns of Nimon

This one, on top of the previous stories of series 16
and 17 almost killed my interest in watching Doctor Who at the time. It
was especially gutting that this was the last story to be broadcast in
this series. However, I have since grown to despise it less. Once upon a time I
would have given this a score of zero out of 10, but now...

2 (prev 1)

6

Shada

An uncompleted classic or a complete bore? A
complete bore.

Update 26th December 2017: I saw the
recently-completed version released on DVD with animated sequences filling
the gaps and I loved it.

This is likely the most definitive version there can ever be, it all
works well together and even though it's not in episode form this also
worked for me; I didn't expect that. There was only one point in this
version of the story where an obvious episode ending looked likely
anyway. I now see it as a special and it really is special. The animated
scenes make the whole story flow better, the music is brilliant, the cast
is wonderful and it's all great fun.

The end scene with Tom Baker as he is now, playing the Doctor of
then, was wonderful, a charming end to a charming story. Tom is a special
kind of actor playing a special kind of Doctor, and I am beyond happy with
this remarkable version of this story. Well done and thank you to everyone
involved with this production past and present.

10 (prev 4)

Series 17 Overview

This was the series that almost finished off my
interest in Tom Baker and Doctor Who. I quite liked episode 1 of
Destiny.. and the ending to part 1, whilst exasperated at the Daleks
for ordering Romana to stay still time and time again, was a highly
memorable one. Part 2 had a similarly memorable one when Davros' alarm
clock went off at exactly the time our heroes got close to him. The story
itself was simply dull though and the Daleks looked terrible. At the time
(and even now) it was hard not to compare it with the previous Dalek story
Genesis of the Daleks and it compared badly. This was a story of
little substance, of naff Movellan robots and poor plotting. I disliked it
greatly.

City of Death did not do a lot for me back
then either, it was a dull affair set in Paris about a human-looking
villain, paintings and comedy policeman and was of little interest. Worse
was to come as The Creature from the Pit really was the pits and I
used to refer to it as The Creature is the Pits for many years
afterwards. The wolf weeds were the least of its problems, and yet more
human-looking villains bored me very much. Nightmare of Eden
continued a trend for silliness in the series and the Mandrells, reported
in the press at the time as being scary, failed to be either scary or
remotely interesting. The silly accent sported by the main villain helped
to put me right off this one.

Then came the story that almost put the icing on the
cake, The Horns of Nimon. I literally found this one hard to watch
at all, it was an appallingly cheap, silly, ridiculous story and I was
further astounded when the BBC announcer said it was the last in the
series. Where was the 6 part story that usually ended recent series? To
say I dis-liked this story is a reasonable understatement and I likely
would have given it 1 out of 10 at that time (surely no story deserves a
zero...?). Shortly after that episode ended I said to myself that if the
series came back as bad as ...Nimon I would not carry on watching
it. That's the closest I've ever come to stop watching the series.

My scores for the stories at that time were,
according to my falling-apart records, 4, 3, 2, 2, 1, giving an average
score of 2.4 out of 10 for the series. It was easily my least favourite
series and had followed another poor series, The Key to Time
adventures of series 16. Tom's portrayal of the Dr bored me by this time
too, he seemed to be playing a completely different Dr to the one that had
arrived in Robot. The changing of companions every series or so
also added to my dis-appreciation of the series at that time.

I've warmed to most of the stories since though,
Destiny... is fairly entertaining and I've now watched it many times, as
is City of Death which is a fun romp. Creature... turns out
to have an intelligent idea at the back of it and the humour doesn't grate
on me now. The human villains are also interesting now. Nightmare...
still doesn't do a lot for me but I quite like the idea at the back of it
and also for ...Nimon too. I learnt about Shada from Doctor Who
Magazine and eventually got to see a fan-produced edit of the existing
footage. The footage looked well filmed and the basic idea was very good
but it still came over as a bit...dull. The eventual BBC edit with Tom
Baker providing linking explanations proved similarly dull but at least
that missing 6-part story was represented.

It's still a bad series overall though, much as I
prefer it to series 16 these days, and thankfully along came series 18
where it all changed for the better. Less silly humour, Tom was back on
form and the stories were more interesting.

The whole
'Doctor-Versus-Giant Prawn' escapade of The Invisible Enemy and
'Doctor-Versus-Giant Squid' escapade of The Power Of Kroll are put into
perspective when compared to this story's 'Doctor-Versus-Cactus' plot.

Doppelganger time in the Tardis. Hated it back then,
quite like it now.

7

3

Full Circle

Similar idea to The Mutants? Very enjoyable whether
'tis or 'tis not.

7

4

State of Decay

Found this corny at the time, but s'ok now.

7

5

Warriors Gate

Couldn't believe how intelligent the series had become.
Highly watchable.

One of the all-time greats, it is hard not to over
praise this one. Then again, what about that snake?

10

4

The Visitation

An all-round enjoyable experience. Good sets, good
cast, good story.

10 (prev 8)

5

Black Orchid

Unique.

8

6

Earthshock

Brimming with atmosphere from the first second. Full of menace and
pace.

10

7

Timeflight

Oh dear, this is as Revenge of the Cybermen is to
Genesis of the Daleks. The first two episodes are quite good though, the
next two are simply dreadful.

An
interesting, but heavily disguised Eastern-style sorcerer Kalid is revealed
to be the predictably-dressed, predictably-giggling Ainley Master, the
purpose of which is never explained and which renders that purpose about as
useful as a Plasmaton.

Having
apparently met the Myrka before (no he didn't), the Doctor fails to explain
to the Sea Base crew that the best way to survive it would be to walk away
from it at a steady pace (no need to run) and that in no way should they go
right up to it and poke it with a gun as this would ensure their death by
electrocution.

The Myrka
probably just beats the tall, bald, skinny rubber chicken that appeared
in Arc Of Infinity as worst Doctor Who monster ever.

I'm fairly
sure the Doctor Who series Bible doesn't say "When all else fails, get a
character to kick-box a pantomime horse in order to achieve a great death
scene". This death just pips Kylie Minogue's 'Death By Falling From Fork Lift
Truck' (as seen in Voyage Of The Damned) as silliest death in Doctor Who
ever.

Having
previously told Jo Grant that the Silurians should have really been called
Eocene's, the Silurians make the mistake of calling themselves exactly that:
didn't they read their history / science books? Likewise, the Sea Devils
obviously liked being referred to as Sea Devils in their previous encounter
with the Doctor and adopted the name.

Having
forgotten that the third eye in their head was useful previously for killing
(and opening doors), the Silurians now boringly use the 'third eye' in Dalek
copyright-breaching use for showing which one is talking at any one time.

This batch of Sea Devils, having woken up from
millions of years in suspended animation, don't bat an unlikely eyelid when,
within minutes of awakening, they are expected to wipe out the latest
dominant species of Earth: I'm fairly sure if I woke up to this news I'd be
saying "Whoah there little guy, back up a little, what's this about a new
dominant species? Who are they good buddy? And when's lunch? I'm
starving like a new born baby Myrka! Union regs and all that...". Sea Devil
Warriors: now who were they meant to have appeared as warriors to
all those millions of years ago anyway?

Loathed this for years but I'm grateful to 2010's
Silurian story to finally establish that there are different colonies of
those creatures: I'm therefore happy to accept that Warriors is a sequel
to an un-transmitted story rather than a sequel to The Silurians /
The Sea
Devils. It's still pants though.

4

2

The Awakening

A cracking adventure that packs a lot into such a short
time.

8

3

Frontios

Seemed good at the time, have struggled to watch it
again ever since.

6th April 2013: I watched Frontios
recently and I thought it had a strong plot, excellent characters and
impressive effects / locations.

8

(prev 4)

4

Resurrection of the Daleks

There's no overall defining plot in this one so
although it's directed / acted very well, it always comes across as a mess
to me.

Sunday 30th April 2017: I think it's the 'send duplicates
to Skaro and let's leave the Dr alone so he can escape' bits that weakens
this. Plus Stein is miss-cast, I can't get away from that. However, the
atmosphere and general plot is pretty good.

6 (prev 5)

5

Planet of Fire

Lots of scenes where nothing happens.

4

6

The Caves of Androzani

Wildly inventive. Davison's last
story, and very gritty it is too.

Update Sunday
1st June 2014: I watched this for the first time since 2001 a couple of
weeks ago and this remains a completely brilliant story. The cast is
almost universally flawless and Sharaz Jek is one of the most interesting
characters to appear in Doctor Who.

10

7

The Twin Dilemma

You have got to be joking; wake me up, I'm
dreaming.

You can't
help thinking that, whilst previous story Caves Of Androzani had a lot of
grit, the only grit this camp story could hope for would likely be found at
the bottom of the birdcage the bird-like Jocondans probably inhabit.

Similar to Resurrection of the Daleks in that many
plots collide into one such that it's a right old mess.

4

2

Vengeance on Varos

Sil is brilliant in concept, design and acting. One of
the best cliff-hangers ever too. I still don't go entirely overboard on
this one though.

7

3

The Mark of the Rani

Ghastly.

3

4

The Two Doctors

Having
successfully re-created his role of the 2nd Doctor in The Five Doctors,
the production team immediately felt it would be great to get Patrick
Troughton back for a story in which he would have rice crispies stuck to his
face, bushy eyebrows, a silly hair do, the chance to camp it up and the
chance to play at least two different characters from the one the audience
expected him to actually play i.e. the Doctor. His Doctor is sadly
missing from this story.

The setting
of the story is crucial to the cast / production team enjoying a week or two
in the Spanish sun but it in no way enhances the story.

Far from the
days when a Sontaran taking his helmet off could make kids run for cover
behind the sofa, the director for this story concluded that a long shot of a
Sontaran ambling along in the sun would have the same effect, which it
didn't.

Instead of
the usual 'Doctor-Meets-Doctor-For-A-Fun-Adventure' story, we get a visually
gory, rat-eating, blood licking, cannibalistic themed horror story with a
nasty stabbing murder that somebody forgot was going to be shown at tea-time
on a Saturday.

In the same
way that blood / violence / gore is gratuitously laced throughout the story, the
shot of Nicola Bryant in a bikini top is gratuitously wasted by use of a
long shot.

15th April 2013: Despite quite remarkable
competition from The Twin Dilemma, Time and the Rani and
Fear Her, this remains my least favourite story of all time. It may
not be the most boring story of all time (see The Time Monster,
The Ribos Operation and
Terminus for this - or rather, don't) but the poor direction alone
suggests that this is wrongly handled, alongside the dreadful plot and
questionable homicidal motives of the characters. The treatment of the 2nd
Doctor (with the continuity-crushing mention of Timelords to Jamie being
only the smallest example, the furry eye-brow sporting glutton being the
worst) help make this an excruciating viewing experience. Simply awful.
I've still watched it more times than Father's Day though.

Update Saturday 27th September 2014: It's taken 29 long years but, jiminy
crickets, there's finally a worse story than this one. Plaudits go to 2014's
The Caretaker for the high calibre of terrible-ness that managed to
out-aghast even this one.

0.5

5

Timelash

I never knew
that the sight of tinsel could induce such fear in fictitious TV
characters.

Continually
running up and down the same corridor easily explains the fact that none of
the unhappy populace ever found or attempted to storm the Borad's lair until
the arrival of the Doctor and Peri.

Like
everyone would, the disfigured Borad fakes the image of an old man for the
frightened populace and has a clone of his real disfigured form in reserve
in case one is needed to be killed as a sacrifice, to bluff the enemy before
ending up as the Loch Ness Monster, it happens everyday.

As per Caves Of Androzani,
Timelash has a disfigured bad guy lusting after Peri:
get to know her first chaps, the whiney voice and whingeing'll soon change
your minds about her. Haven't you suffered enough as it is??

Possibly
getting his own back, Paul Darrow out camps Colin Baker in much the same way
that Colin Baker out camped Paul Darrow when he appeared in Blakes 7. Fair's
fair.

I like this
story by the way, I find this light and pleasant viewing.

7

6

Revelation of the Daleks

This one really didn't need to have the Doctor in it at
all with the way it's written. It is a fantastic story though, even if the
white Daleks look (and sound) cheap and nasty.

Although the Daleks
look terrible, this is a clever story.

Update Saturday 20th September 2014: Not as terrible as the
Daleks that started appearing as of 2010's Victory of the Daleks.

Awful. Mostly. But at least the Doctor and Peri don't
seem to be arguing much now.

2

2

The Trial of a Timelord

Mindwarp

This one gets better on repeated viewing. The last part
is especially effective.

8

3

The Trial of a Timelord

Terror of the Vervoids

Good bits, boring bits, just like a salad.

5

4

The Trial of a Timelord

The Ultimate Foe

Nicely made but nonsensical.

Nicola
Bryant's Peri and Brian Blessed's Yrcanos getting married?! Never! It's
impossible to believe, even when you take into consideration that this only
happened due to JNT's decision to give everything in 'Trial' a 'happy
ending', that anybody so over the top, bolshy, loud and overbearing would
end up with Brian Blessed's Yrcanos.

Having
evaded the Rani's exploding man-traps to reach the Pleasure Dome, the
Lakertians' Pleasure Dome is invaded by Tetraps armed with guns who threaten
the Lakertians with death by killer insects if they refuse to wear ankle
chains that will kill them if they ever disobey. Eh? How many ways to kill a
Lakertian? Many. There are almost more ways to kill a Lakertian than the
number of Lakertians there are left to kill.

Bonnie
Langford's character Mel screams her way through the story in exactly the
same way I scream my way through the scenes where Kate O'Mara impersonates
Bonnie Langford.

We get to
see Sylvester McCoy's rendition of the rare art of playing the spoons and
not only do we get the chance to see this in part one, we get the chance to
see it again in part two. You can have too much of a good thing you know,
but seeing too much of a bad thing is just rubbing it in. The reason it's a
rare art is because people don't want to see it, let alone see it twice.

In terms of
deaths the score equals Tetraps 1, Lakertians loads. This explains why
nearly all the bad guys survive / escape at the end of the story, probably
optimistically (but unrealistically) looking forward to a return appearance.

Puts The Twin Dilemma into some kind of perspective. On
second thoughts, they're as bad as each other.

Update Saturday
6th September 2014:

The story does contain one of my favourite moments in Who history
though, and for that reason alone puts it above The Twin Dilemma
for me. That moment is when Sylvester's underrated Doctor performs a
Charlie Chaplin hat-holding impression when running from a room. I simply
enjoy that moment very much.

Sylvester makes an instant highly likeable impression in this story
even if I don't enjoy the story too much and I was immensely pleased with
his characterisation of the Doctor from first viewing. He impressed me
from the start and I remain warmly fond of his Doctor to this day.

2 (prev 1)

2

Paradise Towers

Such a good idea and it almost works. Description of
Mel: computer genius obsessed with locating swimming pools.

7 (prev 6)

3

Delta and the Bannermen

Highly likeable.

8

4

Dragonfire

The scene where the alien baby snaps at the Doctor
remains my favourite funny moment in Doctor Who. I like this story, though
the crassness of the 'cliff-hanger' ending to part 1 is simply embarrassing
to watch.

The Daleks have
never looked or sounded worse than in this story but the story itself is highly enjoyable.

Update Saturday 20th September 2014: Not as terrible as the
Daleks that started appearing as of 2010's Victory of the Daleks.

10

2

The Happiness Patrol

I may be in the minority but this is great stuff and I
only wish the story had been longer (6 parts or more).

At the time this
was a story that probably embarrassed a lot of Dr Who fans as it featured a villain who
looked like Bertie Bassett - it was hardly the kind of story you'd want to try and
convince somebody who didn't already watch it to watch it. Over the years though I
have warmed to it very much, and now regret that the Kandyman didn't appear in it more and
that it wasn't a 6 part story. It's a very stylised, clever parody of politics gone
mad, and is entirely unique. Despite it's candy coloured style, it is a very
intelligent story.

9

3

Silver Nemesis

I detested this for years then warmed to the thought
that it was so bad it was great. I could watch this every day and gain
something new from it. Highly enjoyable for all the wrong reasons. It's
must-watch TV.

The
Cybermen's plan to destroy gold-strewn Voga in Revenge Of The Cybermen as
a matter of self-preservation seems a little pointless when they have little
defence against gold coins catapulted at them by a teenager from Perivale.

In no way
should anybody concerned with the production be embarrassed by the use of a
poor Queen impersonation before being embarrassed at the duplication of the
same plot as Remembrance Of The Daleks from the same series.

As the
Cybermen wander unnoticed around the countryside after having slaughtered a
bunch of policemen, you can't help wondering if their cricket-gloved hands
will be practical for handling the bow and arrow they're so keen to find.

A witch from
the 17th Century has no trouble in getting to the 20th
Century but feels the need for a lift in a car once she's there. Like the
Cybermen, Lady Peinforte also feels the need to wander around the countryside
and encounters two thugs who, to be fair, don't look out of place hanging
upside down from the tree they'd taken their acting lessons from. Gripping
stuff indeed.

Cybermen
phrases such as "You will be deleted / upgraded!" and "You will become like
us!" convey menace in the same way as "Give me the bow!" doesn't.

The story was made to *celebrate* 25 years of Dr Who, *snigger*, and is all
the more (unintentionally) funnier for it. Don't get me wrong, I get a lot of enjoyment out of this
one, I've watched it many times. The extended version which is sadly not
available on DVD simply extends the enjoyment.

I like this for all
the wrong reasons, in much the same way that the story was scripted and filmed in
the wrong way. Cybermen wandering throughout the country (sporting cricket gloves)
without so much as a by your leave, Cybermen who seek a bow and arrow and have 'menacing'
dialogue such as 'Give me the bow', Cybermen who die after being hit by gold coins
catapulted at their chest, a witch who gets in bother with two feeble thugs, a Queen
impersonator (complete with Corgis), a radio that can pick up signals/pictures from space
and the same basic plot as Remembrance Of The Daleks, a story from the same
series! This, for me, is the Dr Who equivalent of infamous film legend
Plan 9 From Outer Space, a misshapen mess of a fiasco, almost as if
the entire production team had been replaced by Ed Wood.

The extended DVD release shows this in a better light:
it works better as one than in four parts.

8

2

Ghostlight

Very clever.

9

3

The Curse of Fenric

Cracking.

An enjoyable
romp despite the obvious rubber-made fingernails of the Haemovores.
The story has faults but is clever enough to be fast paced enough so you
don't notice & question the plot holes.

9

4

Survival

Ainley's
Master puts his ambitions of would-be universal dictator (as in Logopolis)
on hold to referee a motorbike competition
in Survival.

Nobody in
the production team seemed to notice that Will Barton cannot act, in the
same way that nobody realised that an animatronic toy-looking black cat
probably couldn't menace a toy mouse let alone the audience.

The
appearance of Hale and Pace in a cameo role was very welcome as it was
exactly that, a cameo.

For some
reason the playground scenes looked as if filmed by amateurs; hmm, perhaps
it is a little unfair to say that as most scenes in this one looked as if filmed by
amateurs.

I enjoyed
the end speech of McCoy's though: however, there's a lot to suffer before
that gets heard.

The end narration is the sole reason for watching, a
melancholy ending. Overall I really don't like this story though.

This builds up nicely to the
revelation that the captured alien is actually a Dalek. The Dalek dialogue
is excellent, Eccleston's Doctor shows fear, and Billie Piper's Rose shows
sympathy. The most intelligent Dalek story to date and the voice provided by
Nick Briggs is brilliant. The Dalek itself looks excellent.

10

7

The Long Game

Trivial fluff. Pointless Adam plot.

4

8

Father's Day

First time I watched Doctor Who and thought
'This ain't Doctor Who'. Good performances though.

5

9

The Empty Child

A great story full of imagination. Didn't like Captain
Jack (ass) at the time though.

A very adult story with real tension
throughout. The revelation that Jackie Tyler has been turned into a Cyberman
is astonishing for a family show. This remains, so far, the best story since
the series returned in 2005.

10

7

The Idiot's Lantern

Maureen Lipman aside this is just naff.

4

8

The Impossible Planet

Dull on first viewing, superb on second.

9

9

The Satan Pit

Gripping stuff indeed. Another very adult, intelligent story.
Evil Toby is excellent and one only wishes the possessed version had been
given more air time. The effects of the Beast are brilliant, the Ood are a
very good creation and the pace of the story is spot on.

10

10

Love and Monsters

Greatly enjoyable as it's good fun.
Elton Pope and this off-beat story is a very different kind of Who story and
was a very enjoyable twist on the series' rationale.

9

11

Fear Her

Oh dear Lord.

A gripping,
claustrophobic story set in a dark Victorian house encompassing a girl whose
drawings trap people within them, with the threat that her wicked dead
father could all-too frighteningly come back from the dead at any time,
would have been good: 'Fear Her' is, however, a cheap story shot in a
modern, brightly decorated un-menacing two up, two down semi in London.

The chance
for such a gripping story set in an old house having been laid to one side,
the chance for a scene involving the Doctor carrying the Olympic torch to the 2012 Olympic
Games is a natural successor.

Update Saturday 27th September 2014: By
crikey there's a worse episode than this one now! Who'da thought! 2014's
The Caretaker is magnificently dreadful!

1

12

Army of Ghosts

Good fun, leading up to an epic...

7

13

Doomsday

...which failed to happen. Good ending though.

"Welcome to
Torchwood" exclaims Yvonne Hartman as she flamboyantly opens the double
doors for the Doctor. "Is this it?" surely thinks the Doctor as he sees an
ordinary warehouse-type set up complete with empty cardboard boxes. Not even
interesting cardboard boxes. Mind you, are cardboard boxes ever interesting?
No. Disappointing.

The Genesis Ark, what a build up to that one too. What could be in it? What
could the four Daleks of the Cult of Skaro possibly have hidden away inside
the Genesis Ark? Davros? The Emperor having survived after all? Some new
wildly amazing Dalek-created menace? Nope, just more Daleks. CGI ones at
that. Bad CGI ones at that. Disappointing on any level. Not Davros then?

"Before the war.." says Rose Tyler in her introduction, hinting that big
battles were to come. Well, that's what war suggests to me anyway. Some
soldiers, a bazooka, a car & Cyberman blowing up, a bit of action in and
around Canary Wharf, that's a war? Disappointing.

Cybermen that were excellent in their previous 2-parter now come across as
wet-paper-bag residents when up against the Daleks. Disappointing.

The warehouse scenes are, in particular, (as) flat (packed) as the
(un-flat-packed) boxes that appear in them. An unusually flat Graeme
Harper-directed production overall. Except, except, that the last 10 minutes
of 'Doomsday' are excellent, beautifully written, beautifully directed,
beautifully scored. The surprise appearance of the already excellent
Catherine Tate was very welcome too: I thought "Yes!" but then with the next
thought I mused that "Oh, but she won't be a companion..." so I felt
disappointed at that thought at the time.

Overall I think that this 2-parter lacked the effects (budget?) to go with
the imagination that fed it: the underlying story is good but the execution
of it is an 'ouch' moment for what has been a triumphant return of the
series from 2005. Oh well, a not-so-good Dalek story out of so many isn't a
bad feat over 45 years, there's always likely to be another Dalek story, the
next one could turn out to be a classic.

Definition of 'disappointing' as used above: Disappointing by Doctor Who's
standards. Doctor Who is still the best series on television by all
standards.

6

14

The Runaway Bride

Disliked on first viewing (though I liked Donna a lot),
much better on second viewing.

Mostly good though I found the idea of a vampire-type
creature derivative and dull.

7

2

The Shakespeare Code

Excellent, where's the sequel?

9

3

Gridlock

Great concept, great everything in fact.

9

4

Daleks in Manhattan

Man, what are these Daleks doing?

4

5

Evolution of the Daleks

Unbelievably poor treatment of the Daleks.

The Daleks,
having tired of using human Robomen and ape-like Ogrons as enslaved
servants, go to the trouble of augmenting Manhattan down-and-outs into
pig-headed slaves: no idea why. A tip to story writer Helen Raynor; just because Russell T Davies
says it's a good idea to use pig imagery within a Dalek story doesn't
mean he's always right.

The idea
that the Daleks should leave the protection of their invincible body armour
would have probably led to the Emperor Dalek regretting his great
'Thinking-Outside-The-Box' idea for the Cult of Skaro. Did Dalek Sec take
him too literally?

one wonders
how long it took the production team to choose the most recognisable, iconic
building in the world for the Manhattan setting, the Empire State Building.

4

6

The Lazarus Experiment

Main plot dull overall.

4

7

42

Excellent re-make of Planet of Evil. And this
time the Doctor's afraid, truly afraid... Brilliant.

10

8

Human Nature

One of the greatest.

10

9

The Family of Blood

Wow.

A clever idea, albeit borrowed from a
'Doctor Who New Adventures' book, very well written, filmed and acted.

10

10

Blink

Positive proof that new creatures can be as good as any
old ones.

The Weeping Angels are an awesome
enemy, and Carey Mulligan makes a fantastic Sally Sparrow.

10

11

The Infinite Quest

Animated? Animated all right, with too many ideas
rushing around to be of much interest.

3

12

Utopia

I expected nothing from this based on the trailer so
was on the edge of my seat throughout most of it. I'd not been this
excited whilst watching an episode of Doctor Who since 1982's Earthshock part one.

A story
that appears to be going one way then turns into something entirely
different. The return of The Master is done so very cleverly, and Derek
Jacobi makes for a very real menace. In story terms I love the fact that
Professor Yana is helping the human race only for his real persona to be
utterly against it. The next two episodes with John Simm as The Master are
very good too but it's this first episode which steals the crown.

10

13

The Sound of Drums

John Simm steals the show.

9

14

Last of the Timelords

Everything is reset which eats away at what is
otherwise a fine episode.

8

15

Time Crash

Good to see two Doctors together and pleased it works
so well. More!

8

16

Voyage of the Damned

The Doctor and Astrid
look at each other, the Doctor screams no! and Astrid plunges with the
forklift truck to her death, having sacrificed herself in order to save the
Earth. Now, I like a good laugh as much as anybody else but this is one of
the silliest deaths to ever grace the screen, big or small.

Voted No.1 Greatest Death
Scene ever to appear in Doctor Who, by Doctor Who Magazine (No. 393 dated 2
APR 2008): life'd be boring if we all agreed on everything.

I'm usually mostly bored when watching this one.

Update: 22nd April 2017: I watched this again last December and I
thought it was great fun. Sometimes it just takes me a while to get to
like an episode. Astrid's look at the Dr before slow-motionally falling to
her death did have me laughing out loud though. Gets me every time :)

Highly original plot very well constructed and
underrated. When's she coming back?

Another clever story, and it gets better
with each viewing.

9

7

The Unicorn and the Wasp

Not that great is it?

6

8

Silence in the Library

Did not like on first viewing but rate it highly now.

9

9

Forest of the Dead

Immense.

Upon first watching the first part I
thought it was dull, didn't look forward to part 2 and then found part 2 to
be highly enjoyable. Watching both episodes again it is excellent. The
Nashta Verada represent one of the best kind of enemies, those that aren't
seen but which have an effect.

10

10

Midnight

Disliked on first viewing but kept thinking about it
the week after transmission so concluded there was more to it than I'd
given it credit for. On second viewing this is a classic.

The evolution of a species the Doctor hasn't encountered before, and one
he doesn't know how to deal with, now that's good.

10

11

Turn Left

An instant favourite.

10

12

The Stolen Earth

Fantastic atmosphere and it has everybody in it,
everybody!

10

13

Journey's End

Great episode but find the resolution to Donna's plight
rather depressing.

6th April 2013: I watched this recently and I
stopped watching at the point when The Doctor and Donna are alone after
dropping off Rose, it's too depressing to watch the rest of that episode.
When I'd previously watched the complete episode twice before I'd find
that it put me off watching any other Doctor Who episodes for
months at a time. Crazy huh?

9

14

The Next Doctor

The best Christmas one since The Christmas Invasion.

6th April 2013: Not any more. Since watching 2010's A Christmas
Carol a second time I absolutely prefer that one to this one.

8

15

Planet of the Dead

Zoe Slater aside this is forgettable fluff.

5

16

The Waters of Mars

Original and extremely atmospheric. A sequel to this
would be very welcome.

9

17

Dreamland

Much better composed than The Infinite Quest,
this is great stuff.

8

18

The End of Time Part One

There's something missing from this one even beyond it
missing an
interesting plot.

6 (prev 5)

19

The End of Time Part Two

Overlong, bloated and plain dull. Until the last 25
minutes that is. But Mickey and Martha? No way. The Ood singing the Doctor
to his sleep? Puh-lease.

Sunday 30th April 2017:
Watched again recently and found it to be more interesting. The stuff with
Tennant looking broody and weepy from time to time was dull though and
just seemed out of character for someone who can regenerate. The character
could have chosen to regenerate into himself so why didn't he? Naff.
However, overall I enjoyed this much more than I ever have before. Except
for that Mickey & Martha being married nonsense. That still sucks.

The Dalek progenitor
thing won't recognise Dalek-looking Daleks as Daleks but will take
the recorded words of an alien curly-haired boy who
says that, they are, in fact, Daleks. Eh? Then the new, out-of-shape,
lacking-in-detail, Dapol-emulating toy-looking Daleks, who didn't accept
those Daleks as being real but who then take the word of an alien that they
are real, then destroy those Daleks as being inferior? What?

Sporting (hardly scary!)
multi colours, the new, wrong-sized Daleks look as if produced by somebody
who'd never seen a Dalek before. Eh? Honestly, I forgive the pig heads and
human Daleks in Daleks In Manhattan over the abuse of the creations in
this story.

The themes of 'last of the Daleks' and of Daleks 'slipping back through
time' are really beginning to wear out their own clichés now.

I'm still looking for the logic whereby Daleks slip back in time to WWII and
think "Let's look up ol' Churchill, infiltrate the Cabinet War Rooms with an
android, go in ourselves, make tea for the soldiers and see if that won't
get ol' Churchill phoning the Doctor up to come and prove we're Daleks! He's
bound sure to be in touch with The Doctor ain't he? Ha, we'll teach that
Progenitor device not to think we're real Daleks! And then wait 'till the
Doctor sees the all-new Daleks in bright shiny colours! That'll scare the
c**p out of him! Victory will be ours!"

I wonder if the armies of the world will use the "You're not a bomb,
you're a human being" technique to persuade any deadly devices not to
activate?. It's a new one on me and I bet it's not in any manual.

I find it mildly amusing that more time is given to the Cabinet War rooms in
the corresponding edition of 'Doctor Who Confidential' than in the episode
itself. It's almost like the Cabinet War Rooms were actually important to
the plot *snigger*.

Amy Pond's self-declared staring contest continues in this episode and gives her great
practice for the next one where she should not have any problems facing up
to the Weeping Angels. Doctor: "Amy, whatever you do, don't blin...oh, no
matter!"

You wouldn't think an episode with such a short running time could be so bad
but I really wish there was a 'forget' button for this one.

6th April 2012: Recently
watched this again, and I've watched it several times since 2010. I still hate
the new Daleks but I really like the first half of this episode. Except...
Daleks who look like Daleks and who were created from the DNA of their Kaled creator should be recognisable as Daleks to the barely recognisable
plastic hump-backed 'as if designed by Dapol' Daleks. I mean, if these are
the superior Daleks, why are they afraid to come out and show themselves
to the other Daleks? If they're not afraid to come out for their
arch-enemy, why are they afraid of the other Daleks???

Pluses for this episode: the war stuff and the excellent CGI.
Bracewell is a great character too.

5 (I used to give this 4, and previous
to that 1 but it has
grown on me - except for those ridiculous-looking Daleks oh and the plot)

4

The Time of Angels

Brilliant.

10

5

Flesh and Stone

Magnificent.

Even a cartoon version of Graham Norton
couldn't ruin the ending of episode 1 for me. This one simply oozes menace
and contains Smith's best performance so far (his first to be filmed in
fact). I've watched this many times already.

10

6

The Vampires Of Venice

Not bad.

7

7

Amy's Choice

Clever!
Bur cheap. Cheap cheap cheapity-cheap.

8

8

The Hungry Earth

Small scale.

5

9

Cold Blood

Bored, bored, bored.

2

10

Vincent and the Doctor

Beautiful.

9

11

The Lodger

Sweet.

8

12

The Pandorica Opens

Eventful.

8

13

The Big Bang

Oh yes.

10th June 2012: Amy finally gets back
the parents who'd disappeared through the crack in her wall...and
immediately goes back off with the Doctor in the Tardis.

8

14

A Christmas Carol

S'alright.

6th April 2013: No,
no, no, it is a whole lot better than merely all right. This is a very
beautiful episode, possibly now the best of the Christmas specials so far.
The casting is excellent, the story is excellent and the whole set-up is
excellent.

Matt Smith has been excellent throughout this
series, he is far for Doctor-ish for me than David Tennant was (much as
I'd liked Tennant). His eccentricity evokes memories of both Patrick
Troughton and Tom Baker, whilst also evoking the sense of seriousness
and urgency displayed upon occasion by those two Doctors.

Karen Gillan (Amy Pond) is probably my least
favourite companion since the series returned in 2005, but she's not a
poor companion at all, I simply like the fact that she is overshadowed
(as is Arthur Darvill as Rory), by Matt Smith's superb presence. This,
for me, is what it should be like, the Doctor in control with the
companions helping. It took me a while to understand why Rory came along
for the ride at all I but have come to like him now, and I'm very happy
with the concept of the Doctor having two companions.

Steven Moffat has helmed a budget-reduced series
and made a classic out of it. The Weeping Angels story is as great as
many a classic from the old days and one I'll be watching again and
again. The Vincent Van Gogh episode written by Richard Curtis was simply
astounding and The Lodger was a rare step outside the box that worked
successfully.
Amy's Choice was another great episode that was character led.
The last two episodes of the series were entertaining, with The Big
Bang the better of those two episodes. I'm still not sure why, in
The Pandorica Opens, a bunch of old enemies want to gang together to
trap the Doctor in a box when anyone of them could have done it on their
own, nor why they didn't simply choose to kill him but that aside, it
was all very, very good. I will still have to watch The Big Bang
again though as there are still bits that are whirling around my head
that need clarification, but that scene where he's reversed back to a
point in Flesh and Stone and you realise what it was you
actually saw in that episode, wow, that's a revelation I can't
believe anyone would have seen coming. Brilliant. Also,
apart from the stone Dalek, there wasn't a specific adversary in this
episode, no mastermind behind it all, and that's pretty unique in Doctor
Who: an enemy-lite episode. This was a brave move considering it was the
last episode of the series, and it worked because of the inherent threat
contained within its narrative: you don't notice it until you think
about it afterwards. As for the preceding episode, it took me three
viewings of The Pandorica Opens for me to decide whether Steven
had written that episode as the fanboy or professional within him (lots
of enemies ganging up together, etc) but conclude that it was the
latter: just.

River Song has become a very eagerly-awaited
fixture of the series, although I think another use of 'Hello Sweetie'
as a message left somewhere for the Doctor to read might get a bit
tiresome. She was also left with little to do in The Big Bang but she is
brilliant, I can't wait for her to turn up again and we're gonna find
out who she is next year. Alex Kingston is excellent as River, showing
the same feistiness and powerful characterisation as that of Yvonne
Hartman (played by Tracy Ann Oberman in Army Of Ghosts/Doomsday -
2006), and they would pass for sisters. Maybe they were. I originally
thought that River could have been a regenerated version of the Doctor's
daughter (played by Georgia Moffett in 2008) but with the kind of
dialogue spoken at the end of The Big Bang this doesn't seem
likely. What I particularly like about the meetings between the Doctor
and River is that every time he meets her it is further back into
River's own past, until we find out who she really is: I'm guessing that
at some point they're are going to meet at a point set between Flesh
and Stone and Silence In The Library. Great stuff.

The change in style that I'd expected of this
series was that it would be darker overall but in fact it has had many
light moments with Matt's Doctor often at the centre of those. The real
change this year I think is that the series has gone back to having
smaller casts set within more confined settings. The Lodger is
set in a house, Tardis and playing field, Vincent and the Doctor
involves very few characters and The Big Bang revolves once again
around a small amount of characters (including the regulars), even
though the stakes are as high as any overblown Russell T Davies
end-of-series epic battle. I like this way of producing tight dramas
around a tight cast (budget?).

Nothing's ever perfect though, and my least
favourite aspect of this series was the unnecessary,
tight-budget-wasting re-design of the Daleks, a folly that makes the
Daleks look entirely ridiculous now. That money could have been spent
elsewhere methinks. The Silurian story was a bit of a disappointment
too, having taken out the third eye, taken out the
electronically-treated voices and instead given them boringly familiar
human-like faces and traits. The word boring sums this treatment
up, but it's one plus point is that it makes clear that there are
different sub-species of the same creature: this helps me forgive the
re-designs that had been made for the Peter Davison story
Warriors Of The Deep. Sadly, the creatures that appeared in this
year's story are likely to be back as I doubt the budget wouldn't
stretch to leaving them to gather dust in a storeroom somewhere in
favour of a new race of creatures (everything in Doctor Who gets re-used
again at some point). I can definitely wait for that story to appear,
(presumably next year in a sequel set 100 years later), just as I can
stand the excitement of Daleks ever appearing again.

The last 'oh dear' aspect of this year's series
was The Beast Below. It just didn't seem very original, though
I'm damned if I can remember where I think I've read it before. I also
didn't like Liz Ten, come on now, did she have to sound just like
anybody? Was that really clever and cool? No. Was the vomit
scene hilarious? No. This drably directed episode followed the almost
film-like style of
The Eleventh Hour and fails by comparison.

Overall then, aspects of the series that worked
were where originality lay, of Moffat's Weeping Angels, of River Song,
of clever time travel twisting stories, of The Dream Lord (bring him
back!), of clever, lighter moments (The Lodger). Aspects of the
series that failed were the unnecessary, annoying re-inventions of older
aspects of the programme's heritage (Daleks, Silurians) and where
cleverness couldn't mask a fairly basic plot (The Beast Below).

I preferred this series to David Tennant's first
series, and overall it falls just after Tennant's second and third
series in my order of preference. Daleks and Silurians aside, I am
really looking forward to next year, with at least one more appearance
of River Song, once again set further into her past, and the explanation
of what caused the Tardis to explode. 'Silence will fall' in next year's
story arc: Fantastic. Here's hoping Amy and Rory stay for the ride for a
while, and hope that Matt's Doctor stays for at least another four
series.

I've now seen these first two episodes of the series
three times and by crikey they simply get better and better on each
viewing. The creatures belonging to The Silence are a fantastic creation,
and whilst they are sparingly used, are amongst the greatest-designed
aliens of the series in its entirety.

There is so much going on
in these episodes but they do not feel as cluttered as, say, Big Bang
or The Wedding of River Song.

8

2

Day of the Moon

But, what happened to the girl immediately after Amy
fired the gun at the end of the previous episode? What happened during
the three months? Why is none of this explained on screen? Annoyances on
this aside, another great episode.

8

3

The Curse of the Black Spot

Shades of Anne Droid. Not very interesting.

6th April 2012: Recently watched this again; I like it now, though why
the Doctor is happy to help somebody who's murdered lots of people is
questionable. Is it hinting that the Doctor used to be the same then
changed his ways and can see that Avery can do the same? No, thought
not. Raised from 3 to 5 anyway.

6th April 2012: Recently watched this again: as with ...Black Spot
this is better than I first thought, it has atmosphere, a good cast and
tight script. Raised from 3 to 6.

6 (prev 3)

6

The Almost People

Almost interesting in places, with a highly unpredictable
cliff-ganger.

6th April 2012: Recently watched this again: this
is even better on second viewing, I just wonder if the whole thing could
have been done in one episode rather than two. The use of doppelgangers
is such a boring / unoriginal idea yet The Doctor's Wife was an
excellent, original idea squeezed into one episode: should have been the
other way round? Raised from 5 to 7.

7 (prev 5)

7

A Good Man Goes To War

Cybermen really are easy to wipe out aren't they?

Although the 'revelation' about who River Song is was hardly a
surprise it was nicely handled. Aside from this the episode was a bit
flat; the episode builds up to the Doctor's appearance then, once he
appears it comes across as business as usual. There's some anger
displayed, but not enough to live up to the title.

I really liked the Silurian and maid, they would be welcomed back
should they ever appear again. The Sontaran, much as I winced at first
when I saw he was almost a jokey character, I also grew to like a lot
and he, for me, is second only to the great Lynx from The Time
Warrior.

Negatives about this episode: establishing the background of a
married couple only to have one of them killed virtually straight away.
The point being? The other main negative is that the episode seems only
to exist to establish who River Song is, it is not a particularly epic
episode with which to take a mid-series break. My thoughts at the end of
watching it seemed only to consist of the words 'So what?'

6th
April 2012: Recently watched this again for the 3rd time: Once again,
much better on repeated viewing, raised from 6 to 8.

30th
August 2014: I recently got around to watching Season 7 extra Demon's
Run - 2 Days Later in which it's revealed how Strax survived his
supposed death in A Good Man Goes To War. I loved it. It was such
a cheeky explanation yet so authentic that I bought into it straight
away. I wonder perhaps though if it would have been better served as a
flashback explanation in the series proper. No? Ok.

8 (prev 6)

8

Let's Kill Hitler

Rather more background info given than I expected (I thought it
might be given in episode 13) and River was brilliant. I loved this.

(which would then presumably be
followed the the next line as broadcast:)

Mels: Shouldn't you ask my parents'
permission?

(I mention this mostly because I liked
those lines and wish they'd been left in.)

9

9

Night Terrors

Very atmospheric though I wish the dolls had turned up sooner. If
only Fear Her had been given such treatment.

8

10

The Girl Who Waited

Karen Gillan gives a brilliant and authentic performance as the
older Amy who has waited and waited for the Doctor and Rory to find her.
Bitterness, sadness, what a great actress. Whereas other productions
(either in Doctor Who, Star Trek or any other series) have used
excessive (unconvincing) layers of makeup and hair to suggest age, here
the makeup for the older Amy is unusually subtly applied and is all the
more real because of it. This episode ends on such a downcast ending it
reminds me of when William Hartnell's Doctor leaves Susan behind on
Earth to what must have been an unknown future, albeit here Matt Smith's
Doctor knows only too well the future of older Amy. This episode has
such a small cast (the three main Tardis inhabitants, older Amy and
hospital voice) and yet in terms of intent, emotion, and depth it is
virtually without parallel in Doctor Who.

9

11

The God Complex

I really did not like the bulk of this one, I liked
the last few minutes though. Easily my least favourite 11th Doctor
episode so far and only just beaten by 'Fear Her' as least enjoyable
episode since the series returned in 2005. I would find it a struggle to
make the effort to watch this one again.

10th June 2012:
Recently watched this again and I liked it a whole lot more this time!
There's a lot of interesting imagery in this one and has a good cast.

6 (prev 1)

12

Closing Time

A light funny episode and very good it
was too. A nice touching scene was where the Doctor sees Amy and Rory in
the shop, and sadness also came through at times with the Doctor emoting
his lack of time left to live. It was nicely and subtly done and this
episode achieved more in setting the tone for a final adventure for the
Doctor than the dreary The End of Time did for the tenth Doctor.

The Cybermen were yet again defeated oh-so easily but, for once, this
does not jar too much as this is a story about the Doctor and Craig, and
of the Doctor's supposed last day.

8

13

The Wedding of River Song

Like The Big Bang this was a
jumble of images and ideas with the Doctor at the centre; like The
Big Bang everything was reset at the end. Like The Big Bang
there was a wedding.

The Silence are
one of the most interesting enemies in the history of Doctor Who and
whilst they are sparingly used yet again, they were effective when used.

Amy's very real response to allowing the kidnapper of her
daughter, Kovarian, to be killed by the species she works for was also very
effective and showed that River got some of her characteristics from her
mother. Having said that, if everything is reset did Kovarian even die?

Due to the jumble of assaults on the senses one or two things do
almost pass you by: the death of The Brigadier for instance. Had this
been the focus of the episode at the start it might have come across as
more than a throwaway scene that you forget the moment the next assault
on the senses comes along. It was a nice idea to do something to mark
the passing of The Brigadier though, and I'd like to think that, whilst
the 11th Doctor only got to hear about his death, in a former
incarnation the 7th Doctor had been by his bedside when it happened.

So the Doctor tricked River into 'marrying' him just so he could
reset everything (again)? Great stuff. I really like the relationship
though, and look forward to more encounters.

As for how the Doctor got out of his own death, whilst not wildly
surprising, it was still deftly handled.

I was hoping we'd find out about how photos of Amy and a baby end
up in an orphanage in America but this, like the explanation for the
exploding Tardis from the last series, are yet to come. (Update Saturday
20th September 2014: Nope, the photo was never explained).

Overall, I thought everything had been thrown into this one, that
there were too many unnecessary distractions and that a simple battle
against Kovarian and The Silence would have been more effective.

The corresponding Doctor Who Confidential was a good one to finish
on; I liked the section with River telling her history so far but as per
her timeline, it was a nice Coda to the last three series, and was as
much a mini episode as Death Is The Only Answer, the Script to
Screen episode written by school children.

Farewell Confidential, we'll soon be bidding farewell to The Sarah
Jane Adventures too, and Torchwood, well, who knows? Doctor Who will
return however, and even though it's over 40 years since I first started
watching the series, this is something to look forward to.

7

14

The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe

I suspect this will be one I'll enjoy
more on second viewing; it's well cast, it has a very polished look
about it but by halfway through watching it my attention span was wandering onto
other matters and found myself not engaged enough to care what happened.
The last scene with the Doctor, Amy and Rory was nicely done and easily
the highlight of this special. I only wish they had been in it more: it
seems to be the case now that a guest star is more important than the
regular companions and it is a trend I wish would stop.

The
audience figures and appreciation index show how popular this special
was, and it's pleasing that, even if I didn't particularly enjoy it,
that I seem to be in the minority.

(Update written 12th January
2014): I watched this again a week or so before The Time of the
Doctor and I appreciated it more on second viewing. It's nicely cast
and is beautifully presented. The only question I really have is what
happened to Bill Bailey, Arabella Weir and the other one's characters?
Were they killed when Sue Brockman tipped over their craft?

I'd
like to see Claire Skinner return as the same character perhaps as a
regular companion in future episodes / series (leave the rest of the
family behind love) as the character is strong enough and able to adapt
to new situations. She would work well with Peter Capaldi's Doctor as an
older companion to an older-looking Dr. Not that I'm in a rush for Jenna
No-Hyphenated-Name-Anymore Coleman to leave though: just saying.

A visually impressive episode and very good it was
too, here's how it could have been even better! I'd have preferred a
2-parter with the subplot say of either Thals or humans (or combined
forces) attempting to reach Oswin in order to alter the Daleks in the
asylum to help defeat the non-insane Daleks. The Doctor would have been
at odds with their motives. The subplot that the episode did go with
just seemed out of place.

I'd have also liked Pond Life
to have been shown as part of this episode as it contained humour that
would have counter-pointed the darkness of the rest of the episode.

Those nano-genes: haven't the Daleks
now created the ultimate weapon that they could use to take over the
entire existence of everything with? Yes.

I've only watched this one 3 times so far but have enjoyed it
every time. Jenna-Louise Coleman is going to be a great addition to the
series, no matter how many different characters she ends up playing.

7

2

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship

Brilliant, enjoyable, great fun. Brian was excellent
and the entire cast were on great form.

This should have been a
2-parter.

8

3

A Town Called Mercy

Second only to 1966's Gunfighters as the best
western ever in Doctor Who.

If you were affected by Susan The
Horse's story, please phone the Horse Transgender Hotline on...

2

4

The Power of Three

Brilliant, enjoyable, great fun. Brian was excellent
and the entire cast were on great form.

This should have been a
2-parter.

8

5

The Angels Take Manhattan

Even by Rory's previous standards, dying three times
in one episode is an impressive achievement. Amy only managed it twice.

Why were the Angels so keen on Rory though?

This should have been a 2-parter.

8

6

The Snowmen

Text message I rec'd prior to broadcast of this
episode: "Just half an hour 2 go. Cunningly what's been kept under wraps
is that they're showing that long lost Troughton classic the abominable
snowmen :)". This was sent as a joke and I
still didn't guess that this was going to include The Great
intelligence! A great surprise though.

I love the visuals for
the latest title sequence (the best since the series returned in 2005),
I love the title music (though why was the end theme still the version
as previously used, eh, eh?) and I loved the new Tardis interior. I also
liked the idea of the Tardis being at the top of a staircase on a cloud.
Nice.

JLC is a very competent actress and I think her characters are
great.

"Do not make any attempt to escape or you will be obliterated. May
I take your coat?". What can I say? Strax is back and I am immensely
pleased. He is a great character (don't care if he was killed last time,
I'm glad he's back) and he had some great lines. I find this alliance
of former enemies (Strax the Sontaran and Vastra the Silurian) a more
realistic alliance than when the Doctor had the Ice Warriors on his side
in The Curse of Peladon: how I cursed back then.

It was nice that the guest star didn't dwarf the story and I felt
that this was a great special. Now that just about all the Christmas
icons have been used (Santas, trees, angels and snowmen), hopefully
future Christmas specials can really be inventive.

Just one thing missing from recent and probably future episodes:
cliff-hangers. Doctor Who is: The Doctor, The Tardis, companion/s,
threat/menace, theme and cliff-hangers. In years gone by the UK produced
cliff-hanger serials where the USA rarely did, now the USA produces many
multi-part series and Doctor Who now consists of single-episode
stories. The advantage of single-episode stories are that if they
consist of weak plots, it's over and done with in one episode. The
advantages of 2 / 3 part stories is that cliff-hangers are usually
remembered and bring the audience back, that characters/plots can be
better developed, and that budgets can be better stretched. Please bring
back the cliff-hangers. Series 6 only had 3 x 2-part stories but the
series managed to have 7 cliff-hangers. More please, more. Thank you and
good night.

8

7

The Bells of Saint John

It looks like the budget really has been
increased with this series, there are more extras than for the previous
two series, more locations, more effects. This was a great-looking
episode though the base-station idea, and the copy-Doctor going up the
side of The Shard didn't really ignite much excitement. The cameo by
Richard E Grant as an aspect of The Great Intelligence was very welcome
though and hopefully the Yeti will soon appear.

JLC continues
to delight in her role as Clara and completely fits this series. Much as
I felt that Amy / Rory were booted from the series too soon JLC just
about makes you forget they were ever in it. There are great signs that
Clara will become part of the pantheon of best-loved companions.

Matt Smith truly is The Doctor, one can imagine him as a
younger version of William Hartnell's Doctor (albeit not as likely to
get 'involved' until he meets Ian and Barbara) and he also strongly
references a younger-seeming version of Patrick Troughton's Doctor;
playful, serious, brave, afraid.

I just wasn't grabbed by this particular episode overall though.

4

8

The Rings of Akhaten

6th April 2013: What a fantastic-looking episode with a great many
alien types walking around. The aliens were more realistic than those
that appeared in 2005's The End of the World and this impressed
me very much. Lots of extras once again, actually showing that there is
a great deal of life throughout the whole existence of everything in the
same way that episodes such as The Girl Who Waited and Amy's
Choice do not.

I felt uncomfortable with the pre-credit
sequence however, the idea of The Doctor effectively invading someone's
privacy (even with the mystery surrounding Clara/s), in effect becoming
a time-stalker, feels unpalatable to me.

My attention span, as with the previous episode, did wander from
time to time, I felt the scene between Clara and Mary first meeting /
talking went on far too long, that the various scenes involving singing
was as cringe worthy as The Ood singing the Doctor to his sleep in
2010's The End of Time Part 2 and that even the simple
sort-it-all-out resolution was overlong and dull. Beautiful effects and
an apparent richness of budget throughout though.

5

9

Cold War

13th April 2013: Likeable and atmospheric. I guess we will see the
same Ice Warrior Skaldak in future episode / s when I suspect he'll be accompanied
by others of his race. The mild re-design of the Ice Warrior armour is
pretty good and the idea of him getting out of the suit was quite well
done even if his appearance reminded me of a race of creatures from Star
Trek: Deep Space 9. The return of HADS was interesting in that it was
another reference to the 2nd Doctor's era, references that began in the previous
series and continues in this one (Time Lord thought boxes, Great Intelligence, Ice Warrior, HADS,
where's it all going to end eh?)

What's the obsession with
singing though?

How this one could have been even better:
a 2-parter in which the Ice Warrior ship turns up at the end to part 1
with part 2 consisting of a battle to save Earth from a number of
Ice Warriors.

Who can predict just how many future Big Finish
11th Doctor CDs will feature the currently untold adventures of The
Doctor, Clara, Captain Zhukov and Professor Grisenko on their way to the
South Pole?

7

10

Hide

20th April 2013: I don't tend to look forward to ghost
stories in TV series' in the same way I don't get excited when I hear of
vampire and werewolf stories turning up. This episode initially seemed
to bear all the hallmarks of a typical ghost investigation and I wasn't
impressed in spite of the fine guest cast. Then, 15 minutes in it all
suddenly got interesting, beginning with the Doctor taking the photos
throughout time: from that point I warmed to this episode greatly. It's
yet another one I think I'm going to enjoy more on second viewing. It
was a fine time travel escapade and yet another visually impressive
episode. A small cast was what the story needed, though for a while I
felt there was more character than plot. Overall though, probably a
balanced episode.

Update Sunday 30th April 2017: I enjoyed it
less on second viewing. It's just dull even with a fine cast and gloomy
atmosphere. How did the Dr get involved anyway? As for mentions of
Metebelis 3, who cares that the 11th Dr pronounces it differently from
the 3rd Dr? Maybe he'd since re-visited the planet and the inhabitants
had told him he was mispronouncing the name. Mind you, it could all have
been sorted out way back at the first read-through of the script
couldn't it, so why wasn't it?

5 (prev 7)

11

Journey to the Centre of the Tardis

27th April 2013: Flippin' 'eck, that
were brilliant. Except for the jibber jabber regarding the android not
being an android and anything relating to the relationship between the
brothers. What were all that for?

It was a small-cast episode,
but that was perfect for this story.

An amazing episode with yet
more fantastic visuals. I felt that the previous high for visuals was
the Donna Noble series and that the first two Matt Smith series lacked
in comparison but this batch of episodes is really matching those
previous highs.

The trip through The Tardis was brilliant, seeing it through eyes
that had seen similar attempts in The Invasion of Time and
Logopolis but acknowledging that this was the ultimate experience.
Fantastic.

The sets were amazing, and seeing The Tardis in such a damaged
state certainly gave the impression that she had suffered a calamitous
and perhaps near-fatal end.

Watching this I had a sense that this episode was going to lead to
consequences in future episodes; a damaged Tardis leading to an
uncertain future. However, everything was reset in very quick time by
the Doctor crossing his own time stream.

Wasn't the act of the Doctor
crossing his own time stream in The Big Bang the reason the
Tardis exploded in that episode? Yet here that same act is used to
stop the Tardis exploding? Isn't this a paradox? Eh? Eh?

This really should have been a two-parter or at least had
consequences that followed on from it into the next episode. I really
liked this one though.

Update Saturday 30th August 2014:

Tried watching it a second time in 2013 and gave up 'cos I got bored.
I then watched it again all the way through a couple of months ago and
still couldn't see what I'd thought was so good about it the first time
I'd watched it but it does have good production values. Still, not so
good overall.

5 (prev 8)

12

The Crimson Horror

4th May 2013: This had an interesting
atmosphere and held my interest throughout. I enjoyed it and the fine
script was more than served justice to by the gargantuan presence /
acting of Dame Diana Rigg. Her acting was a stand-out performance in the
entire history of the series. And yet this was another bloody 1-parter!!!!

Okay, I wasn't overly fond of
Mr Sweet but I did like the resolution! I also enjoyed Vastra, Strax and
Jenny once more, although the Strax 'Tom Tom' scene was a bit too
forced.

7

13

Nightmare in Silver

11th May 2013: The Cybermen got a
makeover and looked no better / no worse / no more or less scary than the
previous design but it's quite astonishing that they've now taken an
interest in chess: my impression of this episode is that the Cyberwhatsit's a bit miffed about losing at chess and unleashes 3
million Cybermen on the small cast because he's a sore loser.

In addition to their new-found chess-skills, the Cybermen have added the
Star Trek Borg trick of adapting to weaponry used on them, also the Borg
trick of taking over a major character (in their case Captain Picard, in
Doctor Who's case The Doctor) and the trick of moving very fast
(presumably they learnt that trick from their experience of the Raston
Robot in The Five Doctors): you wonder how it's all going to end.
Well, as usual with every Cybermen story, it ends with an army of
Cybermen being all-too easily wiped out no matter what upgrade they've
had.

Now, tell me, what happened in this episode that could possibly
lead to Emperor Porridge asking Clara to marry him? Was this some kind
of homage to King Peladon asking Jo to marry him out of the blue in
The Curse of Peladon back in 1973? It can't have been for that
reason could it? Really?? It was a pointless moment no matter what
the reason and it escapes me how this scene even got to the draft script
stage let alone the screened episode.

I'm also not sure what the kids contributed to this episode: had
they not been in a coma for a chunk of it, it might have been fun /
scary to have had them pursued by Cybermen, but once they're under Cyber
control any sense of danger was immediately lost.

The fact that there's a lot of Doctor-to-CyberDoctor talking in
this episode also takes away the inhumanity of the creatures themselves;
it's irritatingly jarring that the Cybermen speak without emotion while
the CyberDoctor is completely emotional. Makes no sense. Matt's
acting is brilliant though, and if this had been about The Doctor
fighting against a possessive creature such as The Mara, the emotion
would have made more sense.

In spite of these weaknesses the episode still manages to shoot
itself further in the foot by being of 1-part duration. As with the
Daleks and Ice Warriors before them, the Cybermen deserve to be in
stories of at least 2 episodes duration: It is pure waste to put them
into rushed 45 min (max) disposable throwaway episodes. This would have
been a better story by building up the menace during the course of part
1 and having a mass of Cybermen (30 say, not 3 million) turning up at
the castle at the end of the first episode. The more Cybermen, the more
easily they're wiped out. A smaller number would have felt more
dangerous. Part two would then consist of our heroes trying to save the
universe.

The next episode looks to reveal important info about The Doctor
and Clara but where was the build up to that in this episode? I can't
help but feel that even next week's episode will seem rushed and
disposable once the 45 mins (max) are over. Bring back the cliff-hangers,
bring back the sense of epic in it's truest sense: 45 mins (max) is not
epic.

Pluses for this episode were Warwick Davis, Matt Smith and the trailer for the
next episode.

5

14

The Name of The Doctor

18th May 2013: "The season finale" as
per the BBC announcements: I don't remember them ever getting this
excited about parts 4 of The Horns of Nimon or Timeflight
but it's a sign of how things have changed - the audience expects a big
ending to whet their appetites for more to come.

It was a case
of one hero holding their own against impossible odds and in the end
Bonnie couldn't hope to win Eurovision 2013 but in the case of The
Doctor a few hours before there's never really any doubt that The Great
Intelligence isn't just going to walk and talk to his / its death.
Assuming he's / it's dead.

Why was T.G.I. that fussed about the Doctor's name anyway? Why was
that convict at the beginning able to know the co-ordinates of the
Doctor's unlikely final resting place? Who cares, there's so much to
like in this episode.

The final episode to feature River? Well, it's a time travel
series so anything's possible, but this did come across as the final
meeting between the two characters, with Clara seemingly about to become
the next more-than-a-companion in the Doctor's life.

It was the turn of Strax and Jenny to go the Rory way of
supposedly dying and being resuscitated and this really diminishes any
character's death. I think Jenny dies twice in this episode and this
death / back to life gubbins seems to have become an established clichéd
standard trick of the series.

I liked the Clara / previous Doctors stuff and it was astonishing
to have her conversing with the first Doctor. It was also nice to see
The Tardis in it's non-chameleon circuit state.

The name of The Doctor? John Hurt apparently. This was a cheeky
but admirable tease and quite quite amusing. Now, what I don't get is
that the Doctor avoids Trensalore because he doesn't want his suspicions
of his future to be correct yet makes it very plain that he already
knows his future when he meets John Hurt... Eh?

So the 50th anniversary special features the 10th and 11th Doctors
and a character who was once known as The Doctor. Is John Hurt a re-cast
Valeyard or will he have another name? And how does this fit in with the
shape-changing-can-look-like-anybody Zygon who will be making an
appearance? I'm wondering how this is going to celebrate 50 years of the
series but hope that it manages to at least celebrate more than just the
last 8. John Hurt as the next Doctor? At 73 years old? I don't believe
it for one second.

Series Overview

Splitting a
series into 2 or 3 sections didn't please me for 3 Tom Baker series in
the 1970s and it doesn't please me now: it's harder to judge a series as
a whole when you feel you've been watching 2 different series. The
subsequent lack of cliffhangers for this particular series has also been
a weak point and I really hope this changes with the next series.

Some stories need room to breathe and confining them to merely 42
minutes or so stifles them. A great many episodes from this particular
series seemed to have been sold short of air time and this further
weakened the series as a whole. The one episode from this series that
this does not hold true for is The Rings of Akhaten which seemed
to have run out of plot 20 minutes into it and was padded out for the
rest.

More people are choosing to watch Doctor Who on catch-up
services, and whilst it is good that audiences still seem to care enough
to watch at all, does show that the series is less of a 'must watch it
now' series and this has got to be bad in the long-term. The less who
watch on the night, the less interest there will be in the series. It is
the lack of cliffhangers and the lack of episodes made in total that is
likely to be leading to this increasing disinterest.

The main
adversaries including Daleks, Cybermen and Ice Warriors are not best
served by appearing in 1-part stories: an audience is surely better
served / gained when that audience believes it is watching an epic. An
epic 1-parter is a contradiction in terms.

Matt Smith remains
brilliant in the role and he really should be given longer stories to
really flesh the character out. Jenna Louise Coleman as Clara has become
an instant favourite and I don't miss Amy or Rory at all.

8

15

Night of the Doctor

(Written 24-Nov-2013) Very good to see
Paul McGann back on screen as the Doctor at last and this was an
interesting mini episode. What is unfortunate is that the 8th Doctor
rapidly changes his mind from saying he doesn't want to be involved in
the Time War to agreeing to regenerate into a warrior with the purpose
of absolutely interfering in the Time War. That makes the 8th Doctor
appear very fickle and I don't buy into it.

The downside to
inserting a hitherto unknown Doctor (Hurt's) as the Doctor who then
participates in the Time War is that it takes everything away from
McGann's 8th Doctor. As a viewer I believed, in the absence of facts,
that it was the 8th Doctor who had fought the Time War, then regenerated
into Ecclestone's 9th Doctor. That, although we had seen very little of
the 8th Dr on screen, that he had been actively involved in events
whilst off screen.

That thought had at least given the 8th Doctor some kind of place
in the Whoniverse other than just that of the American TV movie. Now I
have to accept that the only contributions that the 8th Doctor made to
the Whoniverse were the TV Movie and this mini episode. That truly takes
something major away from the 8th Doctor, and hands it all over to a Dr
we haven't even known about until recently. This jarrs too much.

This was a likeable mini episode however in terms of atmosphere
and for the presence of Paul McGann.

5

16

Day of the Doctor

(Written 24-Nov-2013): Some nice touches
here, with Ian Chesterton getting a mention, beginning titles that
harkened back to the earliest days of the series, an appearance by Tom
Baker as a future retired Doctor and John Hurt's Doctor treating his
older selves as if they were school children or as adults in a mid life
crisis. Added to this were some excellent special effect sequences and a
great updated design for the one-costume-used-to-represent-several Zygons.

The plot was incredibly terrible though, a timey-wimey load of
nonsense that re-wrote even more of the Time War than Night of the
Doctor did. As a story it 'celebrated' the previous 8 years 8 months
of Doctor Who and not the full 50 years that it should have.

The scenes between Smith and Tennant were nicely played and had
the right amount of humour but the whole Zygon stuff played out then
disappeared in a puff of nothing. The Time War was re-written at the
stroke of a thought but the execution of it stopped the episode dead in
its tracks. Tedious and utterly dreadful.

John Hurt remains one of the greatest actors ever but I care not a
jot for his Warrior / War Doctor. Nearing the end of his incarnation, he
did not seem ravaged by the Time War in his attitude and nothing in that
episode gave me the impression he had ever been a warrior. Such an awful
sketch of a character. It should have all been left well alone to the
8th Doctor.

Let's talk about Rose: wasn't Rose though was it? This was as
similarly disappointing as when 'phantoms' of old companions appeared in
The Five Doctors in 1983. I will only be concerned if I ever hear
of cast members returning to the series after this.

Massively disappointing overall and not one I'm likely to watch
again for a very long time. Perhaps, for me, it's time for a change of
direction within the series, one that veers away from 'timey-wimey' &
'wibbly-wobbley' to 'simple-dimple' & 'scary-warey'
(piss-take intended).

In imaginings of infinite possibilities there's always a chance
that in an alternate parallel universe / reality there was a different 50th anniversary story that
did justice to the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who. If so, does
anybody have a copy?

(Update written 12th January 2014): I watched it again three weeks
after it was first broadcast and by golly-gosh strike me pink if I
didn't think pretty much the same as when I first saw it. Except that I
thought the effects were even better than I originally thought and that
the Tom Baker sequence was simply wonderful. The Zygon resolution
managed to irritate me even more on second viewing and that's got to be
a first in all the decades I've been watching Doctor Who. Still,
I'll watch it again (and again and again) because I remain what I've
long been, a fan of the programme.

So where the 'eck does the Valeyard fit in now? Or doesn't he? Or
does he? Or..

What would this episode have been like if McGann and Ecclestone
had been involved? Would it have been McGann's Doctor who would have
'pressed the button' as usurped by the fake Hurt Doctor? I suspect so,
and it would all have been a whole lot more acceptable and satisfactory
if he had. Ecclestone would have been a fantastic addition too and I
hope he does play the role again at some future time.

Just read the latest Doctor Who Magazine (issue 469) in which
Steven Moffat says he wanted to use the film posters of the Peter
Cushing films as backdrop to a scripted line: this would have been
brilliant as I too would have liked Cushing represented in the special:
he was as much a part of my childhood as Patrick, Jon and Tom. Never
mind though eh! At least you tried Steven and how much it shows you
care.

(Update Sunday 1st June 2014): I've seen this 3 times now which is
twice more than I'd originally thought I would. The last time I saw it I
saw it in 3D and it did look pretty good in places. The plot still
hasn't won me over however.

The darn thing's now been voted 'Best Story Ever' by Doctor Who
Magazine readers (issue 474): let's just agree to disagree on that one.

I'd hope that in 5 years time that the next poll will show this
story placed at a more considered level once the coat tails of the 50th
anniversary have long faded into the dim distance.

(Update Saturday 30th August 2014): I've finally drawn breath and
stopped laughing at this story being voted best story ever by Doctor
Who Magazine readers and in return I'm pleased that Doctor Who
Magazine Special Edition No. 38 states that the Hurt Doctor was only
created as a result of Christopher Ecclestone pulling out of Day of
the Doctor. This cheers me up a lot as it explains why we've got
another sparsely-seen Doctor: how clever Moffat was at coming up with a
solution to that problem and I have a feeling I will like this episode
more next time I watch it. Doesn't let the whole
Zygon-plot-just-ends-and-ends-terribly-badly affair off though.

An Adventure In Space and Time

My absolute favourite programme of 2013 that had an extremely likeable cast in
an extremely authentic-seeming potted history of the early days. It
could have been even better had it been at least 30 minutes longer but
overall this was simply fantastic. David Bradley gave an incredible
performance and yes, I hope they get him to play the first Doctor in an
upcoming story. The cameos by William Russell and Carole Ann Ford were
welcome but were also an unwelcome reminder that they were wrongly left
out of Day of the Doctor. Other cameo appearances by Jean Marsh
and Anneke Wills were also very welcome. Sacha Dhawan was excellent as
Waris Hussein and I was particularly fond of Jessica Raine's Verity
Lambert. 10 / 10.

The Five-ish Doctors (reboot)

A massive thank you to Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester
McCoy for this. This was incredibly funny and I loved all the cameos. It
was good that so many people were able to send themselves up and this
was nicely packaged together. Indeed it would be interesting to see
Davison, Baker and McCoy team up for a comedy series of some kind as
they worked so well together in this. 10 / 10

(Written 12th January 2014): I liked this
one, it answered most questions and sometimes even answered them quite
well. It was a reasonable (and different) way to say goodbye to one of
the very best Doctors to date.

One question (at least) remains
though: how did that picture of Amy and child end up in the children's
home in the US back in Day of the Moon? One can hardly imagine
Madame Kovarian saying 'Hold on love while I take a picture of you and
the babbie' before whisking Melody off. Not that she had time to either.
Why does a picture exist? These and possibly other questions will never
likely be answered on screen where they belong.

This was well directed and even
though the great battles of Trenzalore took place in a 50 square metre
area you could just about accept this, if you accepted it as a grand
fairytale.

I chuckle to think it took up to four years to explain why
'Silence will fall', a statement that until this episode actually meant
nothing, while the 30+-years question of how the Doctor would regenerate
beyond his 13th incarnation was dealt with within seconds. Such an obvious
answer too and one that had been foreshadowed a long time ago in The
Five Doctors: so simple it's a stroke of genius.

So he's gained 13 more lives then? Good on the face of it but
actually he lost two of his previous lives at the stroke of a keyboard
when Hurt's Doctor and The Other Tenth Doctor were claimed to be full
and proper incarnations of the Doctor. So he's actually only gained 11
more lives.

Of course, who knows if there have been other Doctors between
McGann and Ecclestone, The Clown Doctor, The Ballet Dancing Doctor and
The Shell-Suit Doctor for instance, and that he's already lived through
more incarnations than The Doctor would like to admit. Only the keyboard
of a similarly talented future writer-producer knows the answer to that mindboggle-ingly daft question. In fact, what about the Valeyard? Wasn't he somewhere between the
Doctor's 12th and final regeneration? Does that count (somehow!) as one
of his 13 previous lives or part of his next 13 lives? Has he lived 14
lives up to the end of Matt Smith's Doctor or is this one to come? Or
has time been re-written somewhere? Or...

Thankfully the paradigm Daleks did not make an appearance in this
episode, though the limited notion of the Daleks not remembering who the
Dr was as at the end of Asylum of the Daleks did and was quickly
dealt with as though it had meant nothing. Actually it had meant nothing
at the time as it was obvious at the end of that episode that a) this
was a stupid idea as the Daleks aren't 'robotic-like' as the Cybermen
who in recent years have been mind-linked in a hive way and that b) that
as soon as they met him again they'd soon learn to remember him.
I've only seen Time of the Doctor once so far but my impression
of what was said was "Hold on how do you remember me?" which was
answered by "A man told us about you while we were chatting over tea and
biscuits".

Clara and Christmas. What an amazing coincidence that Clara and
her family were celebrating Christmas at exactly the same time the
Doctor was going to a snow-bound place known as Christmas! It's almost
like this episode was a Christmas special rather than the last episode
of the current Doctor! I wonder how Logopolis and Caves of
Androzani would have looked had they been shown on Christmas Day: there would probably have been tinsel all over the tower at the Pharos
Project and Spectrox would have likely been sourced from 50-centuries
old mulled wine vats kept by the Santa-suited Magma Beast.

The make-up for the ageing Dr was less impressive than that of Amy
in The Girl Who Waited and surprisingly Matt didn't come across
as being old: it looked as if he could have tossed away the walking
stick at any time, but this was a nice idea. Another 300 years of his
life passed by though? Really? Not in any believable way, no sir-ee.

Handles. A nice idea of the Doctor becoming fond of a Cyberman
head, perhaps this was his only link with the universe at large for the
majority of his time on Trenzalore, and it came across well. I grew to
like, feel sad at the loss of, and miss Handles in short succession in exactly the same way
that I've never cared for dear old 11-stories-strong dead Adric.

The regeneration was both long and short (yeah, I know) in that
from the time he goes from all brighty-lighty to lots of talking in the
Tardis to Clara / Amy lots of time passes, then whoosh he's Capaldi in
less than half a second. Well, at least this is a different way of doing
things and the whole standing-with-your-arms-outstretched
Ecclestone-Master-Tennant way is so last decade. Nice touch
having Amy appear in a never-the-less unsurprising cameo (albeit I'd
avoided everything, papers, social media, etc before the episode and
didn't actually know she was appearing) but where was River? You know,
his like, wife? And Rory? And Brian?

Capaldi. "We're probably crashing". I write this line here because
after transmission I had to play this line back several times to understand
what the latest Dr had actually said at this point: the sound was such
that Peter was drowned out. I only hope that his voice is able to
counter such noise in future episodes because he needs to be able to be
heard!!! I like the accent though and I'm glad he's using it. To be
known as the 12 or 14th Doctor though? 12th, but he's (at least) the
13th Doctor so far in reality (actually, none of this is reality, what
am I talking about?)

The word is that the next two series seasons will have un-interrupted
runs. That's good news, I only hope that means they're not short
series seasons!!!! 10 episodes or more is fine, batches of 5, 6, 7 or 8 are not
so fine!!! And please bring back the cliffhangers!!!!!!!!!

There are some great bits of enjoyment
to derive from this one: Vastra, Strax and Jenny are delightful, with
Vastra finally proving to have a sense of humour. I've more or less
given up on thinking that Jenny will turn out to be a regenerated
Doctor's daughter (remember how kick-ass she was in the last series just
as The Doctor's Daughter Jenny had been?) but this is a trio of
characters that deserve to at least have their own family-friendly
special (if denied a whole series) from time to time.

The
telephone call from Matt Smith's Doctor was a nice touch and thankfully
he didn't ring while Clara was holding her breath but instead managed to
time it conveniently for when Clara had finished her first adventure
with the latest who-knows-what-number-he-is Doctor. I can imagine that
the fifth Doctor phoned Peri up after her first adventure with the sixth
Doctor only to have to interject the words "I did..he did what?!" into
the middle of Peri's very likely excitable explanation of recent events.

The episode flew by and some of the time was even spent on a bit
of a plot involving self-repairing clockwork droids. The plot was
entirely trivial though, or rather, so much in the background that it
felt trivial. The basic idea of clockwork droids repairing / replacing
parts is actually a creepy idea but was submerged under the weight of
explaining the 'This is the Doctor in spite of the fact he looks
different and has aged a lot' gubbins.

I'm assuming that time was re-written shortly after the events of
this story as news of a dinosaur in Victorian London would most surely have made
it to all
the scandal rags of the time. So, not even that important a plot to be
considered a 'fixed point' in history. Says it all.

This was another small-cast episode with The Doctor, Clara,
Paternoster Gang and an android doing most of the talking throughout,
and it's going to be a tedious series if that's the way it works
throughout the other 11 episodes plus Christmas special. Does the budget
just go on effects and the look of the show? It seems to me that if you
have a space / time travel series it's of more interest to have the main
characters meet other characters than for them to merely converse
amongst themselves. Otherwise you could literally set the episode / s
anywhere or drop the space / time travel element totally.

The latest titles are ok and one wonders if the watch idea is a
link to something that happens within the series. The Tardis looks very
cartoon-y though and is somewhat of a surprisingly poor representation
in a series that seems to put visuals above plot and cast size. The
theme tune is as ok as all the previous ones since 2005 and no better /
worse.

I liked Peter Capaldi and his Doctor will be even more likeable if his Doctor
is allowed to speak to people other than Clara, the Paternoster Gang and
the villain of the week. It will also be interesting to find out why his
Doctor has a face he recognises and which he himself believes he's
copied from somebody else's. The choosing of who to regenerate into
(fixed into continuity when Derek Jacobi's Master regenerated
into John Simm in Utopia) explains why the Doctor chooses to look
like Maxil from The Arc of Infinity when becoming Dr No. 6 (does
the Dr like strong-willed men? or ones with helmets containing feathers?) and why the Dr chooses to look like
comedian Sylvester McCoy when becoming Dr No. 7. He even managed to
inherit Sylvester's talent for playing the spoons when he did so.

Had to keep the phone / s switched off
'till I'd watched this one 'cos I got delayed in watching this one on
the night. It was broadcast at 7:30pm and I didn't get to watch it until
9pm.

It was well worth the wait though, this was Doctor Who in
an exciting adventure with the Dalek / s and it was the best one in
ages. This had the feeling of a traditional Doctor Who story of the
distant past albeit with character introspection idly thrown in from
time to time.

This was a well-made episode and the few extras managed to look
like they were differing people by use of their faces not always being
on show; this worked in providing the illusion that there were more
soldiers on board the ship than there actually were.

Peter Capaldi put in a grand performance as a genuinely
mesmerising Doctor and this is a Doctor who is proudly alien to the
humans whose lives he wanders through. I'm going to use the word
'gravitas' at this point as this will undoubtedly be one of the words
overused in the coming years to describe Peter Capaldi's Doctor and I
want to be amongst the first to use it, having written this on the day
of first broadcast of this episode, Saturday 30th August 2014.

The story had shades of 2005 episode Dalek in that a
damaged Dalek is repaired and then goes on a rampage and I should
probably think in terms other than 'who cares' when it comes to it but I
enjoyed watching this one so much I almost forgot to think 'thank crikey
those awful looking Daleks first seen in Victory of the Daleks
aren't in this one' but I remembered just in time.

It was good to be reminded that the less Daleks there are in a
story the less easy they seem to kill and this helps them regain their
power. I was also pleased not to see them flying through the air, they
seem more powerful when they're on the ground. I also admire that aspect
of their species which says "We've got enough firepower to destroy any
human spaceship but let's get up close and personal so we can
exterminate them face to face"; this makes them a far more interesting
race of despots than a shoot-from-the-safety-of-a-spaceship type.
They also seem to be reluctant to use their ultimate nano-gene
technology (Asylum of the Daleks) that could easily give them
complete victory over every living creature and I think this is mainly
down to the fact that this would simply spoil their fun.

I'm no too fussed as to who Missy is as one gets used to studying
/ questioning / speculating upon Steven Moffat's ideas / raised
questions only to find them explained in a throwaway line later on in a
future episode. Best simply to wait and see what happens.

Danny came across as a likeable character who had no place in this episode
other than to interrupt the flow of the main plot but of course he will
have a proper place in future episodes and I look forward to that. Will
his solder character be as Captain Jack'd to death by a Dalek and then
resuscitated? Nah. Mind you, who out of the main cast / partially
recurring characters hasn't died and not been resuscitated since
Rory in 2010 / 2011 / 2012?

Excellent production values, witty
characterisation and a cracking plot made this more enjoyable than I
would have thought possible from the trailers I saw.

Another
episode I thought that could have benefited from an extra episode as I
liked Robin, The Sheriff and robots very much, but what an enjoyable
episode. The Sheriff managed to look like Anthony Ainley's Tremas from
The Keeper of Traken which was an interesting if accidental nod
to the past and the double-bluff to the audience of whether Robin was a
robot or not was nicely done.

Peter Capaldi's Doctor is wonderfully likeable and he and Jenna
Coleman's Clara are perfectly paired. I like that Clara can admire /
hero worship the Doctor yet not be afraid to tell him to shut oop every
now and then.

The line from Clara regarding "the two words sonic screwdriver"
has become an instant favourite for me and already one of my all-time
favourite moments in Who history.

Must be terrible being the Doctor and
having a nightmare involving the presence of Clara under his bed but I
for one (of many) likely wouldn't find this a problem.

Barns
were certainly made to last on Gallifrey weren't they? Got the
impression the barn that John Hurt's Dr was in during Day of the
Doctor was there right at the end of Gallifrey's supposed
destruction so that's some impressive kinda time-bonded construction
they've got going on there.

There was a lot to recommend this episode as worst so far of this
series and topmost amongst them was the already terminally dull
relationship between Clara and Rupert The Bore. Maybe it's just me but I
just don't care if they will / won't get together as that's the province
of continuing-drama series' and soaps. I'd quite like this series to get
back to focusing on space / time travel / monsters / villains / other
characters. Does it really make Clara a fully-rounded character for us
to witness her love life or is that just completely not what I watch Dr
Who for and have I answered my own question within this question? Or
not?

The makeup / hair for Orson was unusually artificial-looking,
though it's reasonable to think this is how today's obsession with looks
will develop over the next 100 years.

Infinite planets, infinite time, and this was yet another episode
that concentrated purely on the Tardis-associated inhabitants. Whenever
this happens I get the same sinking feeling as when I used to watch
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea having differing members of the
Seaview crew being possessed / copied / meeting look-a-likes every
week. The more it happened the weaker the series became.

Humans will be time travelling in the next 100 years? Hope that's
true in real life but in Dr Who terms it seems to me that everybody's getting in on
the old time travel act such as to render the Dr as Last of the
Timelords as almost irrelevant. If everyone can travel in time how does
this make the Dr special? Daleks, Cybermen, now humans, where will it
all end? Right out the window in a time-can-be-re-written way hopefully.

It's a telling sign that Clara likes spending more time teaching
at a school than space / time travelling so could the Dr please find a
companion who would actually rather travel with him than mark homework?
Teaching is possibly a wonderfully important profession but seriously,
how many teachers wouldn't drop their school registers in the bin in a
second in order to travel with the Dr? Clara's likely the only one who'd
ask "Can you drop me off after we've kicked some Weeping Angels butts
because I'm taking detention tonight?"

Onto the plot itself and to sum it up: the Dr decides, having felt
the need to sit on top of the Tardis at one point and say the word
"Listen" to no-one in particular, to wonder if everyone has the same
dream and finds out that they do, especially those of the only other
three main characters in the episode. Gripping stuff indeed.

The Doctor effectively decides there's an issue to sort out then
sorts it having invented it in the first place. Gripping stuff indeed.
Oh I've said that already.

We've had the concept of clockwork robots back in Deep Breath
and now we've got the concept of 'something under the bed' back too,
both from The Girl in the Fireplace. Gripping...oh.

Shades of Midnight too, a creature unknown to the Dr and of
attempts of that creature to enter a spaceship. Not that it was a
creature? Who knows, 'cos we'll never know 'cos the explanations were
missing and will remain in the the file marked 'Photo in the Children's
Home and Other Unexplained Moffat Mysteries'.

It was a genuine surprise that it turned out to be the Dr as a
child in the bed in the barn and this was brilliantly and exceptionally
under-emphasised into insignificance shortly after the initial
gasp at that revelation. Jenna was excellent in this scene though,
reassuring the Dr and once again becoming part of his timeline. Very
well written and superbly acted.

It's just the dream of the Dr that helps create the thing in the
bed in the children's home? Yeah? No? Discuss amongst yourselves as it
doesn't make any sense to me. Honestly, give me something as crass as
Timeflight over this kind of nonsense any day.

On the plus side there were the odd one or two good lines of
dialogue between the Dr and Clara, and my cat got unusually more fuss
than is usual during the viewing of a Dr Who episode.

I love playing the 'Spot the previous
story' game with this particular series in which I try to recognise
which stories ideas for the latest episode came from but I've only
spotted two this time, Hide and The Beast Below, Hide
referring to the creature finding a creature and The Beast
Below with the voluntary 'forget' device. Oh wait, there's also the
memory worms, which came from...I forget. Something recent though,
something to do with snow and men, had the word 'The' in the title. What was it?

Unlike the
opening of The Genesis Ark from Doomsday and the moment the
Pandorica opens in The Pandorica Opens I didn't get my hopes up
that there would actually be anything remotely interesting inside the
vault and I can only applaud the writers for ensuring my pessimism
wasn't mistaken. I'd actually thought we might be leading up to a
cliffhanger to a 2nd part though and they caught me by surprise by doing
exactly what they've been doing for an extraordinary amount of time,
not having a 2nd part to a story. Do I feel foolish.

Slow motion. Slooooooow motion. Slooooooow
moooooootion. Boring when used for little or no purpose and that was the
case with this episode.

I wasn't fooled by the supposed death of Saibra the shape-shifter
and decided, as I sat on my sofa and said "Double-bluff" to no one in
particular, to wonder if we were all meant to have been fooled by
this and without wasting anybody's time at all decided that this was
indeed the case.

This might be a record in sci-fi / soap / continuing drama history
but I can't think of any other time I've seen two reasons for
duplicates in the same episode of anything, those reasons comprising
shape-shifter and
convenient-budget-stretching-because-it's-Keeley-Hawes-and-she-likely-costs-a-packet-so-lets-make-her-play-two-roles-and-hopefully-people-will-think-we're-being-clever
clone.

I'm sure Danny's going to be an important character but could he
please just stick to the episode / s where this will actually matter
rather than appearing in every episode because it's just not that
interesting to see Clara and he go on dates and to have the excitement
of space / time travel get in their way. If this is a long drawn-out way
of writing Clara out of the series give me the 'Leela says she's
marrying Andred in a very quick tacked-on scene at the end of a story'
method any time. Look how long it took Porridge to ask Clara to marry
him (out of the blue!) and at least he was interested in space / time
travel. If Clara wants ordinary then she should stick to Earth and let
Claire Skinner's Madge back into the series (an older companion, now
there's a novelty).

Mind you, reckon Psi and Saibra are gonna be back for more,
they're almost interesting enough to want to see back too. Not as much
as I'd want to see Sergeant Benton, Captain Yates and Jo Grant back to be
fair but I still live in hope.

Ooh, wait! Just thought! The creatures in this episode were the
last of their species! If you can spot at least 5 other stories from 2005
onwards that involve 'the last of their kind' (whether it was or not)
you are likely not the last of your kind.

I'm getting in the mood for an epic that I don't
believe is on the way.

The good news for the 2006 story Fear Her is
that it's not now the worst episode of the series since its revival in
2005. It's also taken 29 years, but 1985's The Two Doctors is no
longer my least favourite Doctor Who story of all time either! Congratulations
to The Caretaker for this remarkable and unexpected out-of-the-blue
feat. It's also a member of that thankfully sparse group of stories /
episodes titled 'This Ain't Doctor Who' which was previously only
inhabited by 2005's Father's Day.

Where or why do I begin?

Clips of Clara having possibly interesting
adventures with the Doctor that we the viewers only get brief glimpses
of in favour of a tedious character play? Yes, let's start with that.
Actually, that's pretty much the entire episode on a pinhead.

We've already had dull scenes of getting to know
Danny and of Clara's growing relationship with him during previous
episodes, did we want or need a whole episode of it? It wasn't on my own
wish list.

This was yet another episode where the menace of
the episode is only the background story to excessive and dull
characterisation. I've no idea (or care) what the robot thing was after, it didn't
matter anyway as the episode clearly wasn't about that or anything else
remotely interesting.

Tedious character interplay infested throughout,
and I found myself wishing Clara were gone from the Tardis for the first
time and, also for the first time, didn't much care for Peter Capaldi's
Doctor either. She was dull, he was dull, they were dull. Even the
various attempts at levity between those two (and Danny) failed to come
across as anything but turgid.

Danny's over the top "Yes Sir, no Sir" reaction to
the Doctor made for unpleasant and embarrassing viewing and was further
hindered by the non-belief that Danny is an ex-soldier in the first
place; he simply doesn't seem to be that at all, not even when indulging
in slow-mo acrobatics.

This was a terrible episode that was poorly
executed and by golly if the entire series was like this I never would
have watched it this long. This is a unique distinct story in that I
cannot find one single redeeming quality about it. For the first time in
my life, I hated a Doctor Who episode. In fact, I don't think are any
words that adequately describe my feelings for this episode so I'm going
to have to make one up. This, therefore, was a skovoxblitzerpink of an
episode, the first of its kind.

Memo to self : when introducing anybody new to Dr Who, don't use
Kill The Moon as the story to introduce them, they'll think you're
silly afterwards, and, just as importantly, never mention this episode
in front of Star Trek or Star Wars fans, they'll quite
rightly take the mickey.

The main cast meet three disposable characters in small-cast episode
with silly plot.

Only 2 of the 3 disposable characters get killed so it doesn't
matter if you show one giant germ spider or millions because you know
there aren't many people that are potentially going to be killed off in the episode
anyway. Therefore there's no real threat.

Courtney was fun and Clara's line regarding her and the psychic
paper was very funny.

The creatures were visualised very well and it might be fun to see
those again but on an Earth-in-peril basis where there's quite a large
cast battling the monster.

The 'moon is an egg' background to the plot is likely the most
silly reason for anything ever to happen in Dr Who which makes this
series unique in all the worst ways. I'd be rightly embarrassed if I'd
said to somebody beforehand who had never watched Dr Who before that they
should give the series a try but then ended up watching this episode.

The hatched egg is then replaced by another egg in a further
stretching of belief and reality's gone right out of the window. All
good fun.

Not for one second can I buy into the human race saving the
creature being hatched from the egg by leaving their lights on and I
have no idea why Clara would even think to try. Still, that's nothing
compared to the Dr deciding, in this story out of all stories, not to
decide the fate of a creature not born of Earth. He says it's Earth's
choice whether that alien lives or dies: why, what's different between
this and any Dalek / Cybermen invasion of Earth story? He's more than happy to
interfere then.

I also don't get why Clara would put the whole of humanity under
threat to a creature not born of Earth with the logic? that it's just a
baby. How insane is that?

Clara has a go at the Dr and decides she doesn't want to see him
again. Well, frankly my dear, I don't give a damn. She never seems to
want to travel with him anyway, or at least likes to have her cake and
eat it. Silly perhaps? But look at the episode I've just waffled about,
how silly was that.

If Enlightenment, Voyage of the Damned and this one are
anything to go by, I can't wait for a story featuring The Hindenburg
In Space as it seems every so often a writer likes to take a
well-known form of transport and shift it into space. It'll happen.

Frank Skinner's small, pointless and insignificant role in the
episode was a waste as his character was almost quite likeable in a
'didn't-expect-much-from-him-anyway' sense. It's like the production
team decided to get Who fan Frank in then didn't know what to do with him once
they got him.

The mummy turned out to be a soldier so has that got anything to
do with Dire-Danny or don't I care? I was sat with a friend watching
this one and even he groaned when Danny came on screen at one point.
I'm with you on that one pal. The one time I myself groaned was when
reference was made to "Are you my mummy?" but then I laughed afterwards
so I can't really take the mickey there.

This was actually quite a good episode and had a plot that was
both interesting and even made sense in places: a mummy on a train in
space may sound like yet another bonkers idea but compared to Kill
The Moon it seems almost normal.

What where how why does Clara change her mind
about travelling with the Dr again and why does she lie about it to
Danny? Beats me but then I didn't understand how the Egyptian Goddess as
referred to at the end of The Big Bang turned out to be a soldier
either. Was that somebody enticing the Dr in that an Egyptian Goddess
running around on the Orient Express in space sounded more exotic than a
bloke wandering around in bandages? Wonder why it took him many years /
regeneration to go and investigate anyway? And what exciting adventure
were we denied watching after The Big Bang that prevented the Dr
from investigating at that point?

Don't stop me now, I'm having such a good time.

It's amazing to know that in the future there
could be a singer on
a space train who will be covering a cover version of a Queen song who
looks exactly like the singer who did the original cover version for a
BBC Dr Who tie-in promotion back in 2014.

The plot was at the forefront of this episode and there was a larger
cast than has been true of most episodes of late, with worthwhile
effects and a sense of menace that has been missing for some time.

Even an appearance by Danny couldn't damage this episode and it
was a return to form overall.

For a Doctor-lite episode this was another triumph of imagination
over necessity, just as Blink was for the tenth Doctor.

This would have made for another good 2-parter and I truly believe
the series would be stronger with less stories for the same episode
count. Just make those stories count.

Rigsy was well acted and it would be interesting to see him again,
and, for the first time, even Missy began to interest me. My hopes are
(finally) raised for the rest of this particular series.

Only one question bites and that's why does the
basic (cuboid) Tardis look different to the basic cylindrical Tardis that we saw
in the recent-ish The Name of the Doctor?

Overall, well done to all involved with this one.

Update Sunday 26th October 2914: As Andrew O'Day pointed out to me, was the shrunken Tardis a reference
to Logopolis or mere coincidence? Well, a lot of ideas for this
particular series seem to have come from the Used Before bucket but
whether this is coincidence / part of a story arc / drawing on the
series' past strengths is a question not likely to be answered in the
rest of this series?

This was a story the Doctor didn't need to turn up for as, even if he
hadn't turned up and youmans had somehow started removing the
vegetation, nothing would have ended differently. The light creatures
would have done what they did and not enough of the vegetation would
have been removed for the solar flare to have done much damage to Earth.
I can only wish that the Earth had been left to get on with it while the
Dr went off and had an interesting adventure somewhere else to which
we'd been witness to.

I say 'the Doctor' and not 'the Doctor
and Clara' as Clara was somehow able to get a sleep-in with Danny and
some children in a museum when it started kicking off. They allow that
these days? What exactly would be the point?

The science behind the protection / safety of the Earth was
interesting in the same way as the explanation for the vegetation growth
was absurd on a Kill-The-Moon scale.

Am I the only one to realise that surely the Dr missed the point
that the light creatures weren't creating the vegetation just to bounce
solar flares off Earth (thereby saving it) but was part of a world-wide
effort to liberate all animals from zoos? Nice to see even this Dr can
be naive as he so easily bought their explanation!

Adric would be even more horrified to have known that the space
freighter he was on when bumping into Earth unnecessarily wiped out the
dinosaurs as they could have been saved by creatures who've always been
around and who chose not to do so. Maybe they wanted to make sure
Adric really didn't get out alive. The inhabitants of Space Beacon Nerva
would also likely be perturbed to find out that light creatures didn't
choose to grow so much as a twig when solar flares damaged the Earth
prior to their own incarceration.

The Doctor may have been an unnecessary inclusion in this Doctor
Who story but for a story about Coal Hill School teachers and kids,
where was Courtney? She got an appearance in Into The Dalek and 2
other episodes but somehow managed to miss out on this one: she would
have been great fun. The kids who did appear were well chosen actors
though and likely helped create a different kind of atmosphere for a Dr
Who episode.

Danny of course got a larger appearance in this episode and whilst
I still don't see him as being an ex-soldier he came across as more
likeable (yeah, you 'eard me) even if he's still anti-Doctor.

I'm probably as surprised as the girl with the voices as to why
the creatures chose her to speak to out of everybody (unless they were
speaking to others throughout the world too? or because of the Dr's
connections to the school?) and why they recreated? her sister? Or had
kidnapped her sister then brought her back? Lots of questions
surrounding an un-interesting plot point?

This was an episode
of explanations and re-explanations with the plot somewhere in the
middle but it held the attention and was almost quite good; it was
certainly clever.

Danny's dead goes the explanation, Danny's not dead goes the
re-explanation. Clara's destroying the Tardis keys goes the explanation,
Clara's not destroying the Tardis keys goes the re-explanation. Missy is
a robot goes the explanation, Missy isn't a robot goes the
re-explanation. It's a place for the recently deceased, it's not just a
place for the deceased goes the re-explanation. Nothing is as it first
seems in this one.

Doctor, Clara, Danny, Missy, Clara's mum, Dr Chang, Ollie from The
Thick of It, some woman on a mobile. That's at least 8 speaking parts in
one episode and could perhaps be a recent record. In terms of where the
plot was taking place, there weren't a lot of people wandering around
the vast spaces or offices were there? Dr Chang had such a big office,
it might have been nice to have had some other people in it.

Whilst nobody watching would have been surprised that the
skeletons were in fact Cybermen hidden in plain site by use of Dark
Water, the question arises as to why Missy felt it necessary to do this.
As soon as the Dr turns up all is revealed anyway. Eh?

As with the everybody-has-the-same-dream scenario in Listen,
the Dr decides to look for something then finds it straight away: he
decides to wonder if there's an afterlife and almost immediately finds
out there is some kind of afterlife. Mystery solved there then.

Missy turning out not to be The Rani was a bit of a surprise, I
figured that with the scientific explanation it would turn out to be her
so was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was The Master having
undergone a gender change. I'm fairly sure the explanation for this will
be slight and almost pointless but it did at least take me if nobody
else by surprise. She's a good actress ol' what's-er-name so this might
be fun.

Steven Moffat does like to find different ways of spinning the
same wheel, so re-inventions of Daleks, Cybermen and now The Master are
his way of doing this. He's certainly right to do this with The Master,
a character who, post Roger Delgado, is only interesting in his / her
first re-appearance then pretty dull the rest. The score so far from
2005 onwards: 5 new Doctors, 3 new Masters.

The eventual realisation that a lot of it was going on inside a
Tardis was a biggie, and the scale of the city was very well realised,
albeit not with many people seen on screen throughout.

Dark Water is a good name for an episode, and the idea
behind that term was certainly clever. If only there'd been more
characters to witness the Cybermen appearing from under the water and
not just the Dr as this would have made for a tense scene.

It looks like the Cybermen are going to go for another stroll
around London but I doubt this will seriously take up much time in the
next episode as this isn't Moffat's style. Invasions don't really happen
in Dr Who anymore so the Cybermen are likely just guest stars in this
one. It's bout the Dr and Mistress, and about Clara and Danny.

There was a cliffhanger of sorts as Danny was seen to be
contemplating the Delete button that he'd been contemplating as of his
previous scene but at least it was an attempt at keeping the audience
hooked for the next episode.

Nice of The Brigadier to finally make an appearance in the revived
series but guessing that Adric was still annoyed about the lack of
attention he got from the Doctor to bother turning up.

Osgood is dead but for how long? Doesn't she represent fandom so is
Moffat really killing off fandom? Am I thinking too deeply about this
one? Anyway, Osgood is great fun and hope she comes back (nobody stays
dead long in Dr Who). Or is she a Cyberman too? No I don't know either.

This would have been a mighty fine 3-parter but made for a very
good 2-parter anyway. It would have been nice to have seen more of Missy
before being popped by the Brig. Quite glad it was the Brig who did it
as it was he / UNIT who were on world-wide alert for The Master back in
the '70s. I liked he salute by the Dr to The Brig too, these were all
very nice touches.

This actually was a bit of an epic wasn't it and had more than a
few speaking roles this time so it was nice to have one's prior
expectations well and truly biffed. Didn't get the whole point of the
World President thing though, it just seemed they rode around in the sky
until it was time in the plot for Cybermen to attack.

The Invasion cyber-head was a very nice and welcome reminder of
the past and my mental wish-list contains having a story with those
design of Cybermen in again. Never gonna happen though.

Missy wanted to be friends with the Dr again (awww) and quite
readily handed over the means for the Dr to end the story conveniently
10 minutes before the end of the episode to give lots of time for
talk-talk-talk between the Dr and Clara, with the gazillions of Cybermen
once again easily disposed of. Thank God Missy was stupid eh?

I liked Missy a lot and assuming the actress is cheaper to hire
than John Simm then we just may see her again, though Masters rarely
stay interesting beyond their first story, which is why I'd have liked
this story to have been longer.

With a lot of this particular series being very weak this was a
nice change and I only wish they would do more stories on this scale and
with more cliffhangers. Yes I'm obsessed with cliffhangers. Wasn't this
story much better than episodes about school trips, trees,
nightmares-as-a-child, and baby moon creatures? Yes it was, so why was
a lot of the rest of the series so poor?

Clara will be back of course, the 'Tardis doesn't trust her' plot
hasn't been concluded or even remembered in this particular series but
too many goodbyes can also be dull.

Haven't mentioned Danny yet so here goes; the plot stopped still
once the graveyard scene came on and boy didn't it drag on. Just press
the bloody switch Clara and be done with it. Still, the overall point
that even in death Danny does the right thing did come through quite
nicely and he did send back the boy (awww).

The revelation that Clara had never existed and that she was the
Dr didn't fool me or likely anyone else for one second and the altered
title sequence was therefore redundant. It would have made more sense
had that been the cliffhanger to Dark Water then the altered
title sequence for the subsequent episode would have been far more
effective; just think what amount of Twitter-ing would have been going
on in the week between episodes if the cliffhanger to Dark Water
had been of Clara announcing she was the Dr, and the impact the
subsequent episode's title sequence would have had. Just saying.

The imagery of the Cybermen coming to life in the cemetery was
very good and I suspect these images will have burned in the minds of
younger viewers on the scale that Cybermen emerging from tombs back in
the '60s did. Very impressed, and the overall story was highly
enjoyable.

I liked
this on second viewing as much as I'd liked it on the first, only this
time I didn't have a mouth abscess, antibiotics and hadn't fallen asleep
by the time it began: it took a phone call to wake me up. In fact I was
fairly groggy watching it the first time so I had to watch it again
before writing this. It just took me a while to do it.

The idea of a dream-within-a-dream is hardly new territory having
been used in many series' in the past but this was a notch above all the
others, almost enough to forget Forest of the Dead, and I enjoyed
it.

There I was thinking Shona might end up replacing Clara only to be
fooled by Clara replacing Clara. I liked Shona and her dancing to
Slade's Merry Xmas Everybody is one of my now fave moments in Dr
Who. It was this moment in particular that I had been looking forward to
seeing again. Such a good actress, I hope she comes back.

The Dream Crabs were nicely executed albeit the script felt it
necessary to point out the Alien similarities. The audience knew
it before the lines were even spoke anyway and those lines therefore
came across almost as an apology rather than a homage.

Shona's Christmas Day itinerary consisting of 'Thrones marathon'
made me chuckle and another nicety was having Dan Starkey playing an Elf
called Ian, once again he's such a good actor and it was fun to see him
play a character other than Strax.

Nick Frost was competent as Santa Claus and even the deceased
Danny Pink was used to good effect, his character making Clara admit
that she was dreaming. Nicely done.

The make-up for the older Clara was as over-the-top unrealistic as
that used for Matt Smith in The Time of the Doctor however the
scene itself was nicely written and nicely performed.

Clara's not gone then, but now they've said goodbye so many times,
will the effect be lost when she really does leave. As with Rory and Amy
who died so often, how can you ever be so sure the character's truly
gone. I do hope Danny's gone for good this time though, even though he
was used to good effect this time, I hope they draw a line underneath
that 'plot' now.

One really wonders what more can be done with Christmas specials
set at Christmas, but this one was one of the best.

There, a BlipView written almost 2 months after the original
transmission. Was it worth the wait? No, I don't blame you.

Not my favourite series of Doctor Who sadly, it's
way down in the doldrums and it's mostly because of the plots and the
Clara-Danny relationship tedium.

Plots were often either trivial (In The
Forest of the Night), silly (Kill the Moon), pointlessly
feeble (Listen) or immensely dull (The Caretaker). That's
already four stories in one series / season and that's quite a lot.
Other episodes I found average (Deep Breath, Time Heist)
and there were no episodes I could really call a classic. Only one cliffhanger
appeared this series and I still feel the series overall is weakened
because of that.

I could see that the production team were trying
to be wildly inventive this season with mad ideas brimming throughout
but nothing save incredulity could be my reaction to the idea that the
moon is an egg, and that Earth can grown trees to save itself from
meteors. These are two episodes where wildly inventive tripped over into
plain silly.

Clara's character acted nonsensically at times,
swearing at the Dr one episode, lying to Danny the next, travelling
again with the Dr the next. This really put me off the character in
spite of what the writers hoped to achieve. Danny was a waste of time in
all senses, I barely warmed to him throughout and will never understand
why a series about space and time travel had to spend so much time
on such a mundane 'plot' featuring him and Clara. This is not Doctor
Who.

Ever since Doctor Who Magazine's preview of
The Wedding of River Song which said Simon Callow would appear as
Charles Dickens I have not read any further previews as I couldn't
understand what I was to gain from knowing about episodes before they
were broadcast. Better to be surprised as I was when the Macra appeared
in Gridlock. I did still look out for episode titles, writers'
names, directors' names, guest names and generally still had an idea of
what was going on but kept thinking 'What if I knew nothing about
what was coming up like when I was a kid?'.

I had also started getting into series such as
The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones and The Big Bang Theory,
series that I was aware of but without in-depth knowledge. All these
series therefore came up with surprises as I caught up with the first 4
series of Walking Dead, 2 (so far) of Game of Thrones, and most of
The big Bang Theory. I got hooked on each of those series and
encountered many surprises along the way, all without prior knowledge.
If I could enjoy such series without knowing a thing, couldn't I
therefore enjoy my all-time favourite series Dr Who even more
without knowing anything about the episodes coming up? So I stopped
reading Doctor Who Magazine (I still buy it and will read them
later), and cut down on looking at Facebook and Twitter so as to know a
lot less about the series of Dr Who that was to come.

I already had some prior knowledge of this series
though as I had been skimming through DWM up to that point. I knew there
would be 12 episodes, I knew The Paternoster Gang were in the first
episode, and someone who will remain nameless and who I'd told not to
tell me anything he knew texted me the name of the second episode which
was a big clue as to what it was about. I guessed (correctly) that Coal
Hill School would be involved, that there would be a younger man in the
series (this turned out to be Danny) and that Steven Moffat would write
the first and last episode/s. But that was pretty much it; I didn't know
who the writers for most episodes were, or directors, or any guest cast,
or most plots. On the day of broadcast of Deep Breath I did
foolishly go onto Twitter and the first thing I saw was a picture of a
dinosaur so that was the last time I went on Twitter prior to broadcast
of an episode. I also became very cautious about going on Facebook.
I also stopped looking at TV listings magazines.

I suspect that had I known about such episodes of
Listen, The Caretaker and The Forest of the Night I
would not have looked forward to them or indeed the entire series. I did
struggle with this series, and there thankfully haven't been many ever
that I can say that about. The Doctor as played by Peter Capaldi has
been very good, though I haven't warmed to him as much as I have the
previous three Drs, his Dr has been at times so far in the background to
Clara and Danny's turgid relationship that it wasn't like the series was
actually about The Dr anymore. Not enough Dr, way too much Clara-Danny.

No, I didn't really like this series, it didn't
appeal to me as a 48 year old or as the 8 year old that still likely
resides within. I doubt I gained much from not knowing as much about
this series in advance than previous ones, it just stopped me
anticipating disappointment along the way. The disappointment came with
most episodes most weeks and I will be looking far more forward to
watching new episodes of The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones
and The Big Bang Theory. The first two of those series are epic
in nature, often feature cliff-hangers and have yet to feature a 'moon is
an egg' plot. At this time they appeal to me far greater than Dr Who
does and that's a crying shame. The magic is missing from Dr Who and I
seriously hope it regains it again soon.

Odd to think I seem to be in a minority regarding
this particular series though, my impression from friends,
acquaintances, the internet (in general) seem to indicate this was a
widely admired series. I can't see it myself.

Fear The Walking Dead, the sequel series to The Walking Dead
is really slow and dull without much incident isn't it? Yes it is. Which
is why I'm glad that I liked this episode of Doctor Who more than that
series.

There was lots going for it, Kate Stewart turning up just to ask
Clara if she knew what was going on was a nice touch, the woman from The
Shadow Proclamation turning up just to tell Snake Man absolutely nothing
was an unexpected touch, Missy turning up just to ask if she could be
involved with the plot somehow was fun, and Davros making a
not-too-surprising re-appearance just to have one last chin-wag with the
Doctor before he popped off was an okay touch.

Plot on a pinhead: Davros invites the Dr for a last chit-chat so
the Dr goes to see him on Skaro but Missy and Clara go along too and the
Daleks, bored with nothing to do as Skaro no longer has any instrument
panels to play with, kill the women and destroy the Tardis. And some
timey-wimey thing to do with Davros as a kid.

Actually I'd said to a friend of mine, prior to the episode and
based on the various trailers on TV, that the boy in the hand-minefield
might be the Master as a boy but once the episode began I sat on top of
my Tardis and said "Davros" to no-one in particular, so when the
adult version turned up later, nice as it was, it was
none-too-surprising.

Davros, on Gallifrey, as a kid, in a Hand-Mine Field. Not
time-locked. Nobody on Gallifrey thought of this during the Time War?!

Snake man, what's-is-name, made for interesting visuals but if
he's been sent to fetch the Dr why feel the need to go all snake-y
anyway? He wasn't going to kill him anyway? Nah didn't get it but it was
fun to watch anyway.

Lots of Daleks again, not CGI ones but the Real Thing, in all
different types from past to present and for no reason at all that we're
likely to get explained on screen so let's have fun with this: is it
supposed to represent that even now the Daleks / Kaled scientist Davros
are still in an attrition-al state at this point? To invoke memories to
the long-term audience of how The Daleks were created in the first
place? No? Is it because the Daleks have different regiments of Daleks
that are sent to different parts of the cosmos-esses? No? Is it because
Davros likes to try out different patterns on Daleks?

The Daleks stood (stood's not really accurate but how's best to
describe it?) as if they had nothing to do all day (hello,
conquer-the-universe, enslave-every-being-and-all-that?) and only got to
kill Missy and Clara before destroying the Tardis before next week's
put-it-all-back-to-the-way-it-was-again restore point is activated. Dead
again huh Clara? No worries, see you next week.

Re: Davros's ship not being a ship and on Skaro all the time:
nope, me neither.

The cliff-hanger is a very welcome return to form for the series,
hurrah! and I don't believe for one second that the Dr will shoot Davros
as a kid. The Dr is the Dr and the Genesis clip of Tom Baker only
emphasises that the Dr won't do this even if he's an older person now.
The clip of the 4th Dr was a nice insert but the Dr is presumably now
kicking himself that he, Sarah and Harry went to all that trouble to get
back a reel of audio tape from Davros & Nyder only to now realise that
Davros had it all filmed on CCTV as well anyway! Doh!!!

Hopefully the Daleks will have something proper-Dalek-like to do
in the next episode, or that they'll stay out of the way in the
background waiting for a good plot in a future story whilst Davros,
Missy, Clara and the chap known as the Dr have some kind of plot of
their own to deal with.

In a mini cliff-hanger of my own the next review / s won't appear
here for four weeks or so as I'll be tending to a project of my own.

No idea who The Witch's Familiar is so I'll skip past that
and onto why Davros has apparently always had the ability to open the
eyes he was born with but chose not to. Nope, no idea there either.

What a great episode, the corridors on Skaro looked wonderful and
were highly evocative of the very first Dalek serial and this was
greatly appreciated. Missy was great fun and was everything that the
so-called psychopath River Song should have been (and wasn't).

The explanation of how Missy & Clara survived extermination was
clever if not entirely complete when failing to explain how the
extermination (skeleton) effect still occurred even though they had
actually been transported elsewhere. The HADs explanation of the Tardis
surviving wasn't a surprise and had been used (or mentioned) in recent
times. Surprised the Daleks didn't know about this trick.

Julian Bleach as Davros was brilliant, his acting was one of the
best performances ever in the entire series' run and he was utterly
convincing. No idea about the eyes but the scene was effective and you
really did get the feel that these two old enemies actually did have
some kind of bond.

I'm glad that the Dr wasn't the cause of Davros becoming who he is
as that would have made the whole of time and space too small a place to
inhabit but made for a very clever back-door revision of the Daleks; the
use of mercy. I liked that. Pity no, mercy yes.

Plot on a pinhead: Davros wants to chat further and tricks the Dr
into saving his life & upgrade the Daleks but in turn the Dr has
actually tricked Davros and the Daleks as ancient Dalek tissue (eh?)
existing in Dalek sewers then turn on them for some reason. And
something about Davros as a kid.

Clara ending up inside a Dalek casing is very clever or repetitive
depending on your point of view as a version of Clara had already done
this in Asylum of the Daleks (kind of) and I'd prefer to say it
was very clever, as in fact it was exactly that. The attempt by Missy to
have the Dr destroy the Clara Dalek does make me query why Missy would
go to all the trouble of pairing them up only to have Clara killed by
the Dr but then that's what a Timelord psychopath would do and I'm not
going to spend too much time querying that one.

Humour prevailed throughout the episode and was enjoyable on that
level, with Davros proclaiming the Dr to be privileged and the Dr
wondering what Davros is on about only to find Davros is on about the
chair the Dr is sat on is one of the most witty moments in Who history.
Loved it, laughed both times that I've seen this episode so far.

The Dr was given much more to do in this story and the balance
between Dr & Companion was put back into its proper place as had been
absent during much of the previous series.

It was between this episode and the next one that the
out-of-the-blue news was received that there was going to be a new
Doctor Who spin-off commissioned by BBC 3. Out of all of us who'd ever
expected the more obvious UNIT or Paternoster Gang spin-offs, who could
have been the most surprised to be told that the spin-off is going to be
called Class and set at Coal Hill School? Not the most obvious of
Dr Who spin-offs is it but thankfully it's not a replacement for
Waterloo Road, no this one will have sci-fi elements (whew) along
with aliens in it. No Clara though, and I'm not expecting Courtney
either. Aimed at teenagers and who knows how good it will be. Certainly
not the people who have already criticised it before it's even been
cast. Watch it first. My only un-asked for advice to the production team
is to call the series something more interesting than Class:
Coal Hill would be a better title. Oh, and have Ian Chesterton turn
up at some point. Has the school ever been ascribed to being in a
particular part of London? If not then Coal Hill would be a good name
for the area that Coal Hill School is in.

How nice to have a story set under water and
not feature Silurians, Ice Warriors or any other previous old enemy of
the Dr.

The episode had great atmosphere, a good-size cast and a proper
menace and it really felt I was watching 'proper' Dr Who again.
Heck, there were even running-down-corridor scenes to bring back happy
memories of watching Timelash.

It didn't take a genius to realise that deaf character Cass was
going to lip-read the ghosts silent words so this did come across as
convenient as when Hexachromite Gas, lethal to reptilian creatures, was
found to be on the Seabase being invaded by reptilian creatures in
1983's underwater adventure Warriors of the Deep. However, I
liked Cass and all the characters in this one, it was about time there
had been a larger cast anyway, and was almost amusing that they should
appear in a small-base-under-siege plot.

The manipulation of the night and day cycles was scary stuff and I
can imagine this story being the kind to be remembered by young viewers
who will go on to become Dr Who writers / producers themselves one day,
it's that good.

Once again the Dr gets centre attention, a relief after last
year's Clara-Danny hijacking of the series and this is brilliant. Clara
is also likeable again as she seems to want to travel with the Dr
instead of moaning at him for being everything he isn't. This is much
better.

Plot on a pinhead: Ghosts talk but no one is listening. One person
who cannot hear sees what they're saying.

The idea of the ear worm is perfect, and I hope this is used to
great effect again at some point, there really is a whole plot itself
there; humans being manipulated without a clue; scary. It wouldn't even
have to be an alien menace behind it, a human villain would likely be
more effective there, maybe a Thinktank-type organisation. Perhaps to
create a The Blue and The Green type scenario. I digress.

This was a very visually impressive episode that had the plot
firmly at the front and one of the strongest stories for many a day.

The Doctor talk to the audience?!
Unthinkable! Liked it, and the Dr can wish a Happy Christmas to all of
us at home anytime he likes as well (well, maybe at Christmas time
anyway).

The guitar-ified theme tune was excellent and amusing at the same
time and I hope it turns up on the next soundtrack CD. Talking of
soundtracks, I've been watching 1975's The Changes again recently
and Paddy Kingsland's soundtrack for that remains one of the best ever:
I'd love that to be released on CD and if ever the magnificent Murray
Gold ever takes a break from Dr Who (unthinkable!) I'd be intrigued if
Paddy were asked back to Who to score the odd story or two: his previous
work on Dr Who during the 1980s was equally as impressive as Murray's
particularly Logopolis which was the first story I ever watched
that made me want to a) know who'd scored the music and b) want to get
hold of it. Murray's music in this particular story seemed to emulate
'80s Who music, it could have come straight out of that era (not a bad
thing I add quickly) and I loved it. Murray's work since 2005 hardly
needs praising as it is all self-evidently speaks for itself but even by
his high standards this is one of his best.

This was another great episode that really cranked up the tension
even if I hadn't a clue what was going on and the Fisher King whatever
it was looked incredibly good. I've not been so impressed with a
creature design since the Destroyer from 1989's Battlefield.

I liked the Cass & wass-is-name getting together scene, it was
nicely done and very well acted by both parties. It's almost redundant
to say it was very well written but it would be wrong to miss that point
out just because that's the case.

Thankfully the story managed to be timey-wimey without it seeming
like it had all been done before and I believe this story will be even
better on second viewing.

Sonic Glasses v Sonic Screwdriver? Who cares, they're both devices
designed to short cut the Dr through the plot and I doubt we've seen the
last of the Screwdriver anyway.

Once again the effects were terrific but only served to dress the
plot rather than be the focal point and that works for me; plot first,
then think how that plot can be realised, not how can we make this look
really good then decide what plot can go with it.

Plot on a pinhead: How the ghosts were created and then stopped.
And something to do with something called Fisher King.

This is the 7th episode of Dr Who in a row that I've liked (or
loved) and things are now really looking up.

To cast Maisie Williams as Ashildr (have I
spelt that anywhere near correctly?) was an intelligent piece of
background production as Game of Thrones is really really big on
the outside and it's good she has been cast as an important character
(she is going to be important isn't she?).

Let's forget she's another character who can live forever a
la Captain Jack Harkness and try instead to wonder if Ashildr's going to
be a companion at some point.

The Mire were nicely designed and were possibly too good for what
was a very simple plot.

Plot on a pinhead: Bad guy needs human.. something in order to
live and his minions raid a Viking village to get it. They get it but
after being unable to resist an un-wise challenge from a defenceless
youngster get electrocuted or something and the bad guy is embarrassed
out of retaliating by the threat to post a potentially viral video
showing him and his minions running away from an illusion. The youngster
dies but the Dr brings her back to life seemingly forever by using some
kind of chip-thing. To be continued.

This isn't so much a 2-parter as two stories connected by one
character and if it weren't for the words 'To Be Continued' seen on
screen at the end of the episode who'da even thought it was a 2-parter
at all. I look forward to the next episode.

Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow was nicely explained; he
more or less says it means nothing, it just sounds good. Which is likely
what Jon Pertwee thought all those years ago.

Who knew that the big revelation of who the current Dr had
modelled his face after would turn out to the character Peter Capaldi
had previously played in The Fires of Pompeii? The answer had
always been blindingly obviously in front of our faces all the time and
I should have guessed from the whole Astra-Romana II thing way back in
the day that this was going to be this answer. Clever though and very
welcome. I'd always thought PC had been given too small a role in his
Tennant episode and now it all fits in nicely. You have to chuckle (no?)
that the latest Dr can easily dismiss people's names or re-name people
but manages to remember someone he met briefly two regenerations /
hundreds of years ago. Well I chuckled anyway.

Now that that question has been answered are we heading for
another regeneration in the next year or so. Hopefully not as this could
prove to be too many Drs too soon.

Talking of faces / taking after someone, is the obvious 7th Doctor
question "Why does the 7th Doctor have a Scottish accent?" answered with
"Because the 3rd Doctor enjoyed watching spoon-playing Sylvester McCoy
on Tiswas during his incarceration on Earth in the 1970s and chose to
look & sound like him in order to remember to have a sense of humour?"

Let's have a quick look at the ratings so far. I remember back in
2005 somebody somewhere connected to the series saying that before
Eccleston's series was broadcast the hope had been for 4 million viewers
such that it was a very big and pleasant surprise to get 10 million
viewers instead. Now Dr Who's overnight figures are around 4 million or
so and a big deal is being made about it; what's the fuss about, It's
still high in the ratings and it's still getting high audience
appreciation figures. The series is not getting more than 7 million
viewers but this is extremely good when you consider that series such as
Doctor Foster are being praised for achieving similar ratings.

The number of overall viewers has gone down, but this is
more likely a reflection of people's opinions of the previous two series
than of this one; you are judged by what you have done not by what you
are doing. The last series, along with the over-hype of the 50th
anniversary Day of the Doctor along with the over-hype of 2014's
Deep Breath have likely played a part in the overall drop in
viewer numbers but, frankly, if the series is still getting 7 million
viewers a week across all viewing platforms whilst achieving very
positive viewer reactions I don't see this as a problem. If the rest of
this particular series holds up as well as the first five episodes then
it will become highly regarded in time, and word-of-mouth will ensure it
is watched time and time again by those who have already watched it and
by those who have yet to watch it.

There's also a
more-than-reasonable chance that putting the series up directly against
ITV ratings juggernaut X-Factor might be having an effect but
that's like saying there are better TV series' than Doctor Who
which is of course absolute rubbish. The timeslot might be the thing
though, putting it on at 8:25pm or thereabouts pushes it into times
associated with programmes more suited to adults and this is unfortunate
as Doctor Who is for the family not just for adults (not just for
children either).

Another not-much-happened-but-was-fun-anyway
episode that put character before plot what plot.

Plot on a pinhead: The Dr hunts for an alien object in the 17th
century, re-meeting Ashildr from the previous episode along the way to
justify the 'To Be Continued' caption from the end of the last episode.
They find the object and there's an alien lion creature who wants to do
something bad with it and Ashildr who says she doesn't care does
actually care about this and reverses the polarity of the neutron flow
by saving a thief with a chip-thing from the previous episode thereby
stopping some adequate special effects in their tracks.

Gosh knows how many exciting adventures the Dr had between this
latest adventure and the previous broadcast one or how many years have
passed in the Dr's timeline since he first met Ashildr but for me only 7
days have passed so it seemed like a blooming great coincidence that the Dr
would meet Ashildr again so soon having not met her in any previous or
future incarnations along his or her way. Summat to do with the Tardis
sticking her nose in? These are two separate stories and would have been
better separated by other stories methinks.

Ashildr's another female who-might-be-good-might-be-bad along the
lines of River Song and Missy and doesn't she like to talk! Chitter
chatter permeated the episode as if there were no plot at all
(admittedly there wasn't much) and this could have all been done in 25
minutes. It was nicely made as most episodes are and even some extras
got paid to be in this one but Ashildr wasn't quite as interesting as
I'd hoped she'd be and why she remembers Clara's name and not her own
beats me. Like most of the bad girl characters who appear in the series
Ashildr has issues with the Dr but likes him really and it has a
familiar deja-vu about it all over again.

The plot was tiny so the Sam character was a nice diversion and
who was in the same vein as Richard Mace from The Visitation, a
story referenced by use of the word Terrileptil in this episode. Such
touches are nice. His was a good fun character and I'd prefer to see him
back than Ashildr now but I guess they'll both be back in another
what-a-coincidence kind of way.

Is Ashildr the Dr's mother? Just throwing that one out
there. They have certain things in common such as the 'losing people'
kinda gubbins, she wants to get out into space and travel and can live a
very long time if not forever. She might age slowly but if she were to
meet a Timelord along the way who fancies her they just might want to
produce a Time Tot or two. There's the mention of the Dr being half
human in the Paul McGann episode from 1996 and this series' fascination
with a hybrid species of Timelord and... whatever along with the idea of
the Dr running away from Gallifrey because of it, well perhaps that
instead of it being a hybrid of Timelord and Dalek as Davros
preposterously proposed earlier in the series, what if it was Timelord
and human. There's also that ever so small point that Ashildr had
forgotten her real name by this episode and the Dr obviously never goes
by his real name either, so like mother like son. Plus the Dr seemed to
recognise Ashildr last episode and saved her out of all the people he could
ever have saved.

Of course I could be wrong.

The oo-er titter-ye-not double entendres were unexpected in a
family show but then again if you know both meanings then you know both
meanings if you know what I mean. Simon Groom long ago said "What a
beautiful pair of knockers" as an obvious double-entendre on children's
programme Blue Peter back in the day and he got away with that so those
that appeared in this Who episode were just as harmless, which is the
point of double-entendres.

The guitar thing's going to get dull, I can feel it, the spoons
from way-back-when used to make me groan and the guitar thing's now
making me do the same thing.

Nice to see Clara make an appearance as I'd predicted to people
that she weren't going to be in this one (or the next two): this is a
nice way of writing a character slowly out of a series, but one which
hopefully won't end in a third-party "She says she'd like to stay in
London and she sends you her love" kind of way.

There's not a lot else to comment on in this episode as there
weren't a lot to it to comment on.

For this story it's nice to see that there's
been a 100% increase in Zygon costumes from that seen in Day of the
Doctor even if this still only represents 50% of the number that
appeared in 1975's Terror of the Zygons. But it's the thought
that counts. Now if it were the Daleks ooh there'd be loads all standing
(not standing exactly) around in all different varieties but the Zygons
had best be pleased with two.

This is a direct sequel to the much un-loved by me resolution to
the Zygon plot in Day of the Doctor and whilst a necessary evil
only makes that 50-years-celebrating special even more weak as it
doesn't even stand up on its own anymore. Not special if it needs to be
continued in another story is it no it isn't.

The story started dull and lifeless with a lot of chat chat
(again) but by the end of the episode it was tight and gripping. I was
bored by early parts of the episode and even when the soldier was
deciding whether to shoot his 'mother' or not this wasn't so much tense
as a time to 'Get on with it!' (by that I mean get on with the plot not
get on with shooting your mother) 'cos it just dragged. I actually said
'Get on with it!' at that time.

Plot on a pinhead: The unsatisfactory resolution to the Zygon
story in Day of the Doctor is resurrected in a
Zygon-splinter-group-wants-to-control-the-Earth kind of way.

The Zygons' modus operandi is to copy other beings and once again
this is hardly interesting. Whether it be Autons, Slitheen or Zygons
they all have the same modus operandi. It would be nice to see the
Zygons taking up some other idea. They are one of the best designed
creatures to appear in the series so seeing them in all their rubbery
blob-ness doing something just as sinister but without all the copying
stuff would be cool. Get this story out of the way, get them a rest,
bring them back but give them something else to do.

The Osgoods were great fun and the question mark jumper and
collars were wonderful touches albeit that further into the episode the
surviving Osgood questioned the Dr about the question marks. This
question is all too suddenly being asked in light of Davros' questioning
of the Dr and the other questions asked along the way. Too many
questions coincidentally all at the same time. Along with the hybrid
stuff: nothing then it's all the time.

That guitar, groan.

Where there's doubles there's time for people to play two roles.
You know it's going to happen because it always happens. I thought the
twist would be that it was the Dr who was duplicated (would that be a
twist? No) but it was Clara who turned out to be duplicated at some
point along the way. Still, it was good to see Clara in spite of being
wrong in previously saying that I didn't think she'd be in this story
much.

There were some extras again in this story, was set over a number of
different locations and had a cliff-hanger ending so it was pretty ok
really and it will likely get better next episode. There's just no way
it could turn into another 'talk around the table' bore as with Cold
Blood and Day of the Doctor, there's just no way. No way.

It certainly wasn't
resolved by characters talking round a table but they sure did stand
around it. But it was no bore.

The escape from the plane with the help of a strong-willed Clara
was an unusual (original?) way of resolving a cliff-hanger.

I find the use of doubles / duplicates tedious, it's a good way of
saving money sure and gives actors a chance to play another version of
themselves but it is one of the most well-worn devices ever constructed
for film and TV. It's not confined to science fiction either, a lot of
TV series I watched as a kid had a double story at some point whether it
be comedy or drama. Back in the '80s one particularly dull series of
Dynasty had a Krystle look-a-like dulling the senses for nearly the
entire series.

Which brings me to Bonnie Clara. At first I thought 'Here we go
again' as the amount of extras on-screen dried up, the amount of scene
locations fizzled out and Bonnie took centre stage. And dull it was for
a while until I realised how well Jenna was playing her. Boringly
predictably evil-smile-type or multi-layered? Both, at first the former,
then later the latter.

It wasn't a surprise that Kate turned out to be Kate rather than
Zygon Kate but it was pleasing to hear 'Five rounds rapid' make an
appearance, it was a nice and cheeky reference to her screen father's
character.

Once we get to the Osgood boxes and the talk round the table stuff
it's incredibly good. I hadn't expected it to be good let alone this
good; 'Here we go again' is what I thought (yet again) at this point but
once again my expectations were turned on their head. Peter Capaldi gets
a lot to say (a lot!) and he is brilliant. The script at this point is
perfect and Peter says the lines (lots of them!) with absolute
conviction; this has become his episode. We've had to wait a long
time to get a perfect scene for his Doctor and this was it. The strength
of feeling pouring from his Doctor, the absolute belief that there was
only futility in going to war, the baring of his Doctor's soul, it was
all brilliant and thankfully stark of humour. This was the Doctor
telling it as it is, and this is going to be one of the most-remembered
speeches in years to come. Jenna was excellent too, managing to make me
as a viewer forget I was seeing the same actor as the one that played
Clara. Flawless writing, flawless acting. I can't praise this scene
enough.

Petronella Osgood was flawless too, Ingrid Oliver is a remarkable
find in acting terms and she simply must come back again (and again). I
could have cried when Osgood turned down the Doctor's invitation to
travel in the Tardis as the character is so appealing: you knew Osgood
would turn him down but it still stung as you're left wondering why a
character who's a fan of the Doctor would turn down the chance; she
could have been returned to the exact same time to look after the boxes
at some future point. Should Osgood be the next companion (please yes)
this would be a real dream come true.

Plot on a pinhead: Budget for the story running out the plot
reverts to type with a few characters played by the regular and
semi-regular cast talking around a table until the running time is up
and the bad alien has been talked out of starting a war. But it's all
done so well.

Monsters
stalking humans, mad scientist, base under siege, this one had it all.

Daft reason for the existence of the monsters, no reason given for
plans of the mad scientist, uninteresting humans, this one had it all.

In the hunt for new ideas, the idea of eye-dust created monsters
is right up there with 'The Moon Is An Egg' and this episode would have
been more at home in the previous series because of it. It was plain
silly.

Plot on a pinhead: Whatever you do don't blink I mean sleep
because there's some eye-dust monsters on the loose because of it. Ohhhh
dear.

The humans managed to be dull and I didn't care who lived or died,
the whole thing was dull. Boring. How, given it was a base-under-siege
story? Is it possible that once the reason behind the menace is explained
all reality goes out of the window? Perhaps it's easier to believe that
Cybermen want to destroy the Earth from the Moon than believe that
eye-dust creatures, made from bits of humans (what?) want to do whatever
it is they want to do. But to be fair, it was dull right from the start.

From the beginning you sense that the episode is aiming for clever
above intelligence: clever camera use, a tale told from the humans' side
not the Dr & Clara's, against the fact this is clearly a simple
monster-stalks-human-in-base-under-siege story but with the most silly
(have I used that word again) reason behind it. It all fell completely
flat for me.

Aiming for clever they even forgot to put in the beginning title sequence, they..what, they meant to leave it out?? Even though there was an
end title sequence?? It was meant to show this was a video being shown
across all media in the future? But had an end title sequence???
So they could have had the beginning title sequence and just not
had a pre-credit sequence??? Sadly this wasn't the script to have
anything so.. clever?... done to it. In fact it is just annoying.

This is at least the second script where a boffin creates a
machine to help mankind and monsters are borne of it: see the equally
dull The Lazarus Experiment.

Thankfully this one wasn't a 2-parter and this is the most
positive aspect of the episode. Actually, that's not quite true.
There'll be people who loved this episode as much as the others in the
series so far and for them it must be good to have had nine good
episodes to watch, lucky so-and-so's.

To be honest I could go on and on about other aspects of this
episode (about the characters & the lines, oh those lines!
And that irritating end speech, and---) but I
think It's best I don't. I just didn't much care for this one.

Plot on a
pinhead: The Doctor visits Harry Potter World and for the second time
this series the Doctor walks into a trap set by an arch enemy, possibly
even the same one but 99.9% chance it's Missy this time. Clara does a
Rory and we're supposed to believe she's dead but of course she isn't
because who would be silly enough to kill Clara by magic pigeon sorry
raven?

Diagon Alley for aliens, the street had the same kind of fantasy
elements you'd expect from a Wizarding tale, making me wonder just how
much the Harry Potter books / films meant to, and influenced, the writer
of this script.

The Raven and the two-headed girl were as fantastical a creature
as any belonging to JK's fantasy world as was Snake Man in the first
episode of the series so one wonders if Sci-Fi is being side-lined in
favour of this kind of magic stuff which would be fine if it wasn't so
obvious.

I like the idea of an alien sub-society hiding in secret in a
magic alleyway but it is too close to the Wizarding one in Harry
Potter's world for real comfort.

Have I emphasized this point enough yet?

So, two episodes this year have had somebody trying to get the
Dr's attention with the intention of teleporting him somewhere else.
Last time it was in the first Dalek episode, this time it's Ashildr (on
Missy's orders?) setting Rigsy up with a countdown tattoo. Both episodes
have had fantasy creatures. Both have had Clara supposedly killed off
near the episode's conclusion. This is where a Script Editor would come
in handy.

A major plus for this episode was that this was a nicely made
episode, the street scenes were nicely atmospheric and the Dr's anger
towards Ashildr at the end was more believable than Clara being dead.
See you soon Clara.

Rigsy could have been anybody in this one, there wasn't a lot of
depth written to his character this time around and this was
disappointing. He is played by a darn good actor and I had been looking
forward to seeing him again. Did Rigsy really leave a baby behind on
their own? Did the Dr promise to get Rigsy back at the point he had
left? That should have been made clearer.

The ten minutes or so of the Dr and Clara talking about Clara's
impending Death by Magic Pigeon Sorry Raven was all a bit pointless as she will be
back as if by magic at some point in the next two episodes. I didn't
feel at all sad at anything going on because it was all artificially
constructed. If she ain't dead how can one be sad, that's how it goes.
Even if she is dead (ha!) then I still won't be sad as it's difficult to
take seriously that she has been killed by a magic pigeon sorry raven.
This is as close as it gets to Kylie's falling to death in a forklift in
Voyage of the Damned for snigger-bility to take it at all
seriously.

For all it's faults though, this was an entertaining episode and I
liked it.

The Doctor believes Clara's dead even if I don't and this helped
shape a very good atmosphere for this episode. There actually did feel a
sense of loss because of the clever way that narration linked with
visuals throughout.

It was a long episode and was clear from the trailer that the Dr
was likely getting most of the scenes to himself, which could have been
a bore but for the script, acting, filming and editing. It could all
have been done in a normal running time but having slept on it overnight
suspect it had the right running time for its purpose, I wouldn't cut
one second of it.

Without knowing what was really going on throughout most of it,
and as my fellow Mini Time Team fellow, the irrepressible Andrew O'Day
said, it felt like the Dr was in the Matrix a la The Deadly Assassin
& Trial of a Timelord, it was so dreamlike. Eventually there
seemed to be an explanation of sorts and it was a remarkably clever one.

I liked the idea of the Dr thinking fast to come up with answers
and ways out and this was once again a very clever touch.

Funny though that the one thing that was updated each time the Dr
re-lived the same experiences was that the diamond wall was altered
whereas everything else reverted to the same as it was when he first
appeared. I've no idea why that is unless I missed an important
on-screen explanation (ha ha I know!) but overall this was a mightily
impressive episode. I've no idea why any of what happened happened or
why it led to Gallifrey but I liked it a lot.

The ending, with the Dr finally back on Gallifrey, was simply
awesome in spite of my being befuddled as at how anything that had
happened had led up to that point. He's back! but what are they going to
do with The Timelords now that they are back?

Plot on a pinhead Redux: The Dr re-lives the same adventure over and
over again to somehow get back to Gallifrey in some way that I don't
get.

Plot on a pinhead:
In order to save Clara the embarrassment of being killed by a magic
pigeon raven the Dr takes her out of time and there's
some muddled something or other about a hybrid, along with Gallifrey and
Timelords.

I wonder how many viewers were pleased that Clara's fate worse
than death (the manner of her death) has been indefinitely stalled, in
relation to the number of viewers who feel cheated that yet another
character has cheated death, in relation to the number of viewers who
wish she'd stayed dead. No idea.

Blow me down if my assumption that Rassilon had been brought back
to lead the Timelords in the Time War was wrong and that as per someone
referring to the Dr it was Rassilon who was responsible for starting the
Time War. So why had the Timelords resurrected him in the first place
then? See you in a later series Rassilon.

You know, all those times the Dr met up with Borusa back in the
'70s and '80s, yet nobody felt the need to mention the word hybrid back
then, it's almost like that whole plot's been made up just for this
series with no duty of care for the past! I know, who'd buy into that?
Just to give the Dr a whole different reason to have left Gallifrey in
the first place. In terms of re-writing history, they've re-decorated: I
don't like it. Not one bit. The re-writing of the Dr's modus operandi
purely for a muddled something about a hybrid is purely irritating. I
mean, why now???

When that Timelord regenerated into a woman after being shot for
no reason by the Dr all I thought was 'Not again, why are they all doing
this all of a sudden?' Not content with Missy or the one mentioned in
The Doctor's Wife this is now seemingly the rage for the Timelords.
It could be their way of ensuring equality in the High Council but is
this a politically correct move too far? No idea.

The episode started out interestingly enough as it looked like it
was going to be about Gallifrey but roughly half-way in turned its
attention 100% to Clara and her fate, just as The Snowmen had
started off being about Snowmen and then half-way through turned its
attention 100% to Clara MK II. This time it was more interesting, and at
least we knew this was definitely her last appearance, though this was
another small-scale ending to a series as it centred once again around
the two main characters. 'Tis a small universe.

I'd wondered if the diner-Clara was going to turn out to be
another splinter of the real thing but was happy when she turned out to
be the real thing, though wasn't the idea that the Timelords wouldn't be
able to get to her if she either didn't remember him or he didn't
remember her? Somehow? I'm thinking that de-materialising the
Tardis-Diner from around the Dr might have given him a clue as to who
she was and that her face appearing on the Tardis door as per Rigsy
might well reinforce any suspicion. I liked all this anyway as this was
a much better farewell than the Harry Potter one two episodes ago. It's
not often an actor gets two farewell episodes in a series, let alone the
very same series. Mind you, Clara had two farewell episodes last year,
Death in Heaven and Last Christmas (sort of).

Presumably the future time-travelling Danny-like character who
appeared in Listen is an off-shoot of some other Clara or more
likely not, that one's been completely over-looked, but anybody who can
re-write the Dr's personal history isn't likely to worry about
re-writing their own characters' personal history or more likely just
forgetting about it.

Peter Capaldi was excellent throughout, his Dr angry and willing
to break all the rules to save Clara in a 'Don't let Adric know I've
done this' kind of way and shows how much the Dr has been affected by
his many years of isolation from the Timelords.

As with the the question of how many Dr's there have been so far,
it's best not to ask how old he is now either. It's frankly a redundant
question now, it's been made impossibly complicated with the 'Two
billion', no, 'Four billion' figures now being banded about. Numbers
just don't mean a thing now, and this distances me very greatly from the
series I've watched and (mostly) loved all my life. There was an
attachment because we knew where each Dr fitted and had some idea of his
age but now it's gone past the point where there's any meaning to either
concept. I feel that as a fan; I wonder what the general audience makes
of such ridiculous figures.

But I digress, the Dr was excellent in this episode, and I liked
the fact he was heroically trying to save his companion, just as Peter
Davison's Dr heroically went out of his way to save Peri in The Caves
of Androzni. The relationship between the two characters in this
episode was perfect, even if the Dr's forgotten he can hunt out another
version of Clara if he really wants to.

Where it all fell flat was in the dialogue between the Dr and
Ashildr relating to the hybrid, which went on so long I had no idea what
they were talking about. The hybrid was the Dr and Clara? Am I right?
Who knows. The Dr ran away from Gallifrey in a Time-Can-Be-Re-written
moment because of this? Why?

The non-surprise revelation that Ashildr was at the end of time
grated as much as the
where-and-why-did-this-hybrid-nonsense-suddenly-appear-out-of-the-blue
plot and why is the Dr suddenly bumping into her all the time?
Coincidence he never met her all those times he was on Earth in all his
other incarnations eh? Was Ashildr brought into the series just for this
moment? ha ha I'd like to think so.

The Tardis set that Clara and Ashildr've run off in is a
fantastic homage to the past and would be welcome back again oh yes.

The good news for Big Finish is that there's a whole new
series of full-cast audio adventures just waiting to unfurl itself on
the world as The Adventures of Clara and Me if they can get the
rights to it if they haven't already.

Overnight I'm not as impressed with this episode as I was when I
watched it, I would have given it 10 / 10 last night but the more I
think about it the less perfect it is. As I'd said to someone who shall
be named Andrew O'Day last night, if this episode had appeared earlier
in the series I would have hated it, it only works at all because it is
Clara's absolutely, definitely, completely, last episode. Had it
appeared earlier in this series I would have said it was too
small-universe-y and too Clara-centric.

The Christmas episode is on Christmas Day at 5:15pm which is a bit
different from the 8pm-onwards slot the series has recently been in,
which is good as its target audience might now be able to tune in and
watch assuming they haven't forgotten all about this series by now. And
for me I can get to bed earlier, ah wait, Mrs Brown's Boys is on.

Update 25th December 2016: It crossed my mind that if the hybrid was
of the Dr and a companion, isn't Donna back in Journey's End a
more worthy candidate of the term hybrid? She did actually have a
Timelord mind. the explanation could then be that in the re-telling of
the story something got lost in translation (just as it did between
author of this episode and this viewer who remains otherwise perplexed
by the whole hybrid issue) so that Clara gets mistaken for Donna, 'cos
Clara gets around a bit as various versions of herself. Look, it's not a
brilliant theory, I appreciate that, but it'll get me to sleep at night.

Plot on a
pinhead: At first glance this appears to be a trite story about the hunt
for a diamond but on reflection it is surprisingly exactly that. And
the Dr says a final goodbye to River for the 4th time.

Am writing this before the memory fades and before the temptation
to read all the other, much better, reviews sets in. Ooh it's been
tempting. Had to get Crimbo out the way first of course though, me the
cat and the turkey all had a timetable to stick to. Still, here we are
all fah-la-lah'd and ho-ho-ho'd to excess and ready to count down the
days to next Christmas so here we go.

Other than a bit of snow in a surprisingly quick return to Diagon
Alley there weren't a lot of references to Christmas and I liked this,
this meant there was room for a good plot that wasn't at the expense of
Christmas iconography and even though we didn't get a good plot it was
nevertheless great fun. Alex Kingston's River Song was highly
entertaining and Peter Capaldi's Dr made for good symmetry with her. I
liked the interplay between the two, though River's inexplicable failure
to recognise him as the Dr for most of the episode seemed a little
far-fetched. Still, this is a Christmas episode so anything goes, right?
Even credulity?

River was playful though the idea she's hunting, and has married,
for a diamond, is a million miles away from the character we first met
in Silence In The Library. Still, this is Christmas and anything
goes, right?

Talking of that bountiful episode and of our first meeting with
River, did she seem in that particular episode to be somebody who'd concluded that she must be near
the end of her life because her diary was almost full? She seemed quite
chirpy to me, so that last 24-year night on whatever planet it was must
have done her the world of good. One wonders what angst teenager Adrian
Mole might have similarly suffered as he reached the end of his first
diary but I doubt he concluded he was going to pop off. Just buy another
diary River love.

The Matt Dr, at the time he gave River the diary, surely didn't
know how thick a diary she'd need for the whole of here 200 year life
even though he'd seen the diary before, it's the fact he had seen the
diary before that made him give the diary to her, surely?

Onto the final-for-the-4th-time farewell, and... the first one was
in Forest of the Dead, then that extra on one of the DVDs (with
Matt's Dr), then The Name of the Doctor and now this one... you
think, blimey, he's only just said goodbye to Clara for the 4th time,
so... the first one was in Death in Heaven (hmm, or was it
Kill The Moon?), then Last Christmas (sort of), then Catch
The Pigeon I mean Face The Raven, then Hell Bent...
isn't this constant saying goodbye to the same people wearing thinner
that a 1st Dr's body? The fact that he's said goodbye to two people
within two episodes seems less interesting as having two
base-under-siege stories in a row, (unless those two are Sleep No
More and Return to Sleep No More obviously).

Three different Drs have now said a final farewell to River over
many hundreds (if not billions) of years of their lives, Tennant, Smith
and now Capaldi: I look forward to the next final farewell with a future
Dr.

Onto the guest cast and Matt Lucas gets this year's trophy for the
'Why Did They Hire Somebody So Good But Only Give Him A Small Role'
award. The man is quite genuinely one of the best character actors ever
so a much bigger presence from him would have been the sensible thing to
have. The role he played was too small for it to be considered a major
achievement within his own career and is a surprisingly small role for
someone so huge within the industry. Greg Davies similarly didn't have a
major role but to be fair he's no Matt Lucas so this was fine. He was
almost likeable in his sublime over-the-top performance but I doubt he's
going to appear at the top of anyone's Favourite Villain list. He
remains a top comedian though, and his stand-up DVDs are very
entertaining.

The visual effect of the creature pulling half it's head away was
the sort of thing that would have seen many a Video Nasty banned back in
the day but the effect was incredulously and astonishingly performed. It
was perfect as ferpect can be so major kudos to the people that
perfected that one.

With River's non-recognition of the Dr I was beginning to think
she'd had a memory wipe as part of some re-writing of time but no, she
knew what the Tardis was and didn't for one second then believe she was
in the presence of the Dr. I don't buy it but it was fun anyway kind of.

It was an episode that for me started off dull then got more
entertaining once the Dr and River were together, it made for a good
disguise to a weak plot: diamond indeed. On the other hand you do need
to be a genius to keep up with what's going on when it comes to all the
timey-wimey stuff: how many casual viewers are likely to remember the
whole River timeline stuff and realise the significance of her being on
that planet at the end of the episode, prior to going off to the
Library. I suspect many got lost at that point.

Overall, not as good as Last Christmas as it was more
character than plot (second episode in a row) but not bad either.

This is a
short review as a) I liked the story and b) the cat's making cocktails
and he sure knows how to make them.

Plot on a pinhead: The Dr is responsible for another human being
becoming augmented with superhuman abilities (Ashildr, and very
indirectly, Captain Jack, and probably others, you tell me) as well as
resurrecting Nardol from the previous adventure. Throw in some brain
creatures, a love interest for the superhero, some fun banter and some
good effects and mix into one large bowl of enjoyment.

This was an easy to follow adventure and it was great fun. It's going to
take me a second viewing to make sure I didn't miss anything as it
zipped along quite lively as well as amiably. I liked the guest cast and
thanks especially go to Matt Lucas for coming back for a few more lines,
he's gonna be fun.

Thanks also go to the BBC for showing it well before my bedtime as
that made it easier to watch than most of last series as I wasn't
longing to go to sleep. Hope the next series is shown around 7pm though,
that seems the optimum time for new Who, and still before my bedtime.

The Dr was more fun than of late, a few laughs here and there make
him more likeable as well as more rounded.

I liked all the comic book connection stuff, it made me feel
nostalgic for American comics of yester-year, might go read some.

The references to River Song, veiled and not-so-veiled, did
somehow bring it down a bit though, do we have to keep being sad she's
gone, she's been dead since 2008 after all and we're still saying
goodbye!!! Please let that be an end, the end this time. We never
had this with Adric.

On the other hand yes I like the fact we're getting to keep Nardol.
Now if we could bring back Donna and have them together that would be
cool. One of those gem stones could fix her yeah? Yes I think so.

I enjoyed this series a lot more than the previous one and I think
it stands up well on its own. I enjoyed the return of cliff-hangers,
even the false one at the end of The Girl Who Died, which clearly
didn't follow on to the next episode. I also enjoyed the return of a
more balanced Dr-Companion combo; unlike last series' Kill The Moon
I can't think of a time this series where the Dr literally hands over
the plot to the Companion in a 'You deal with it' kind of way. Thank
crikey for that.

Clara is a much more likeable character this series because she
doesn't whine about anything and actually seems to quite enjoy
travelling with the Dr.

The writing overall was nicely done and with the exception of
Sleep No More restored my faith in a series I'd been losing that
faith in for the two previous series. Ironic that the most recognisable
plot device in Dr Who, a base-under-siege, lots of running around
episode should turn out to be the weakest in Sleep No More. The
fact that it was an episode that simply irritated due to its assumed
cleverness of seeing a story from a camera point of view and of leaving
out the title sequence just emphasised how strikingly wrong a direction
an episode can go in. Thankfully. If it were all perfect it would all
become dull, and this wasn't a series that was dull overall. Even the
weakest episode has a place in a series because it serves to show how
varied a series can be, plus that particular story will have appealed to
a great many viewers in spite of my own views and I guarantee it will be
an episode I'll watch again when I'm in the mood to. I used to dislike
The Time Monster with a passion plus most of series 17 back in
the day but I (mostly) enjoyed The Time Monster last time I
watched it and I can watch all the stories of series 17 and find
something to like in all of them. I just have to be in the right mood to
watch those stories and I don't rend to watch them all in a row.

So shall it be with Sleep No More; it, along with all the
other stories of season 9, will merge in with the previous 52 years'
worth of Dr Who, I'll watch stories when I'm in the mood to watch them,
all higgledy-piggledy, amongst the stories of all the other Drs, and it
will find its place to be watched at the time I'm in the mood to watch
it. I bet I like it more next time, it'll probably be sandwiched between
3rd and 7th Dr stories, Who knows. There was a time in the 70's where I
didn't enjoy whole swathes of stories and I pretty much like all of them
now to a greater or lesser degree. If you want to see what I mean please
see my scant review of The Face of Evil
from Series 14.

Peter Capaldi's Dr was much more a Dr I could recognise this
series, not that I thought he was bad last series, just that he wasn't
given a lot to do, and I think he's found his feet. He certainly seems
to stand on them a lot whilst delivering long speeches but this is
Peter's forte as his Malcolm Tucker role in The Thick Of It had
long ago proved. This is playing to his strengths and has been (Hughie
Greene lines aside) a very commanding performance this series. Long may he continue.
I think I'd have found Matt Smith a hard act to follow no matter who had
taken over as Dr but Peter has managed to do it. So knowing our luck
he'll leave after the next series butihopenot!

I wanted to leave writing this overview until I'd had a chance to
sleep on it for a month or two and in that time Steven Moffatt has
announced his departure after the next series. It's been a blast (no,
really), his series' will be those that people come back to in the
future and who, watching them amongst the likes of Terminus,
Underworld and The Horns of Nimon, will appreciate those
episodes as much as, if not more, than those of the previous Producers.
Sure, characters like River and Clara might get multiple exit episodes
each but spread out amongst the Pertwees, Bakers, Tennants et al, will
each be appreciated even more greatly in an individual way than
had they all been watched close together. Stories assume classic status
over a period of time and there's a good chunk of Moffat-led episodes
that will, in time, be considered classics.

Steven has helped maintain the series' popularity throughout the
world and the constant reference to Dr Who in The Big Bang
Theory both delight and show just how recognised the series is.

There will be many who will miss Steven's style of story-telling
but there's always a time to move on and he has picked his time, so this
gives an opportunity for a new Head Writer to join the series. Chris
Chibnall is an interesting choice and his writing is good. It'll be
different but that's good in itself isn't it? Contrasts, different
styles, different ethos, all to the series' good I'd think. Like anybody
else I'd hate for the series to get stuck in a chronic hysteresis, cor
blimey no.

Personally I hope Peter Capaldi stays on board the Tardis for
another 3 series just as I'd always hoped the same for Tennant and
Smith: he is The Doctor.

Moffat has one more series to go and I'm not unhappy that there's
a wait for it. I like the idea that Dr Who doesn't have to be on the
same time every year, routine is terrible, and the Dr's life should
never be routine. One new episode in 2016? Fine by me. I'll likely like
the next series even more having waited for it. Hopefully it's being
shown in one go and not split in two though. With cliff-hangers.
Whatever happens, we have to make the most of the Moffat era of Dr Who
because it is coming to an end, whether we liked all / some / none of it
or not. It's been a blast so far for me though (with some notable asides
of course).

He's back
and it's about thyme, I mean time, as thyme can be re-written.

This is a different Dr from the one introduced a little while back
in An Unearthly Child, this one now actively encourages human
contact as per his wanting to tutor Bill for whatever reason there is to
do that.

Plot on a pinhead: The Dr's been at some University for 70 years
as part of some sub-plot to be rationally explained (hopefully) at some
point during this series and one of the staff there takes an unusual
interest in him. The Dr therefore decides to privately tutor her whilst
by coincidence some mysterious happenings relating to a puddle are
happening onsite at that University. Then some time travel stuff whilst
being tracked by a genuinely creepy creature and after letting her go
cue a happy ending.

The Dr and co are on the sidelines of the Dalek / Movellans clash
whilst dealing with an alien that has a crush on Bill. What's happened?

The Dr's now based at a University, sister-series Class is
set at a school, both have mysterious events happening on-site,
I, oh let's move on.

I like Bill, I like Nardole, the Dr's okay, the Movellans were nice
to see albeit I would have enjoyed their appearance more had I not known
they were appearing (as with the Macra in Gridlock), but having
seen the trailer that had them in had likely hoped they were going to be
part of a larger story. Cameos should perhaps be left out of trailers
for that reason. Unless this is a clever way of showing a future story
though I think the Dr says it's the past. I fear the appearance of the
Mondas Cybermen later in the series may turn out to be similarly disappointing.

Nods to the past such as Movellans, old Sonic Screwdrivers, Out Of
Order signs, photos
of Susan are all nice but nicer when they're part of a good plot rather
than a reminder of good old times.

As to the plot, it seemed to take a while to turn up, wasn't that
interesting and was resolved without incident. It didn't grab me.

My original review for this episode was going to be the word "Oh".

Update 22nd April 2017: I re-watched this episode the next night and
I enjoyed it more. Sure it has a small cast, effects that have been used
in other episodes (The Waters Of Mars), very little real plot for
a while, yet Bill is such a likeable character that it's not as bad as I
first thought it was. The introduction to the Tardis scene was
particularly well done.

5 (prev 4)

2

Smile

Broadcast:
22nd
April 2017. BlipView written 22nd April 2017.

Plot on a
pinhead: Whatever you do, don't Blink / Breathe / Frown (delete as
appropriate). Robots kill their human creators and The Dr switches them
off & on again. Oh, and Anthony from The Royle Family turns up in
a cameo role.

There was so little going for this one right from the start, with
only the series regulars turning up to speak most of the lines. The
problem is that when you only have a small cast there's no threat
because you know the regulars are going to survive and in this
particular era of Dr Who, even if they are killed they would be brought
back to life in some way anyway. So, no threat. Even Nardole didn't get
many lines.

The episode, in spite of the tight-budget-inducing weakness
mentioned above, was blooming good anyway in a 'Prove me wrong
whydon't'cha' kind of way. I liked it. Though... it does seem odd that
the Dr is all too keen to blow the place up before thinking of switching
it off and on again.

At the core of this episode was a clever idea and it was nicely
filmed. It looked very pretty even. I will watch this again before long
I reckon. It did seem a waste to only get in a guest cast for so very
few scenes though, this does make the series look cheap no matter how
clever the story is. This is the second episode of this series and the
second to have a small cast and this will wear thin if this is the way
the rest of the series goes.

Side point: Is this the beginning
of the Earth colony that turns up in 1988's The Happiness Patrol?
No wait I'll try and explain. Is there a story passed on over the
generations that the initial colonists were killed because they didn't
smile and that this got twisted over the course of time into the society
we see later? You're not convinced are you? The Kandyman could be a
future version of the Emojibot? No? Sure? Okay.

6

3

Thin Ice

Broadcast:
29th
April 2017. BlipView written 30th April 2017.

Plot on a
pinhead: Some unexplained captive creature eats people and its resulting
doo-doos prop up a nasty rich person's lifestyle. The
willing-to-do-anything-crooked-for-money con-artist child thieves get
rewarded with his house and money at the end and proves that it pays to
be crooked as long as the Dr likes you.

This one looked like it had money spent on it and even had people
other than the regular cast say some lines in what seemed to be a very
enjoyable episode with good effects and an atmosphere akin to that
during the RTD days. Even the bit where the Dr handed the plot over to
Bill in a Kill The Moon way ("You choose Bill, it's your planet
even though I've saved it a bunch of times before without bothering to
ask anyone") didn't annoy me as much as it should have.

The other bit that had Clara written all over it in a "Was this
script a leftover from when Clara was in it?" way was when Bill was
doing all the "How many people have you killed and are you all right
with that?" gubbins which tickled my irritation levels but didn't quite
poke it into red.

Onto the cast and it was brilliant, the kids were cool and getting
Nathan Barley in as the bad guy was a particularly good bit of casting
that I hadn't picked up on before watching. Total f*****g Mexico
in my opinion.

Bill Potts is a really really good character, she's honest in her
opinions, willing to try anything, she's uncomplicated, dizzy and funny
in places. Pearl is excellent and I'm already thinking that if Bill's
only a one-series companion this is going to be as sad as it was with
Martha Jones and Donna Noble leaving after only a series.

Who's knocking on the vault? Nardole knows and he ain't saying. I
like this sub-plot, it's kept simple in exactly the way the hybrid
sub-plot wasn't last series. Much appreciated.

For two episodes in a row the Dr's stated he's 2000 years old,
he's seriously rounding down how old he is now but this is also
appreciated as it keeps it more accessible. Let's just not keep
mentioning his age in the first place.

7

4

Knock Knock

Broadcast:
6th
May 2017. BlipView written 13th May 2017.

Plot on a
pinhead: A wooden creature-thing along with beetles consume lodgers in a
dark house that should have been the house in Fear Her all those
years ago. The events in the episode take place every 20 years? and the
Landlord is the father of the wooden creature or the son of the wooden
creature and not sure it matters which round way it is.

Pluses for this episode are David Suchet, the cast in general, and
that the Dr doesn't already know there's something happening right from
the start, unlike in Hide in Season 7.

It was nice of the wooden-creature effect from The Doctor, The
Widow and the Wardrobe to make an appearance in this story, just as
it was nice to see the water effect from The Waters of Mars make
an appearance in The Pilot recently. I'm only wondering what
other previously-used effects will make a reappearance this series.

I'm not a fan of film & TV ghost stories, they all tend to employ
the same creaking floorboards / knocking on doors / strange sounds
cliches
in general so my mind wandered a few times whilst this one was on. The
eventual 'what it was all about' wiffle waffle didn't particularly
engage me either. The walls were made of beetles just as the walls in
Smile were made of robots. I'm never gonnna trust a wall in Dr
Who again.

Who's behind the door of the vault? Well, this is series that's
meant to be a good starting point for new viewers so I'm currently
assuming it's no-one we've come across before 'cos that would be
off-putting to new viewers wouldn't it?

I didn't rush to write about this one because it's an average
episode and it was kinda flat. Tell you what though, at least I can
remember some of this episode a week later whereas I can't remember one
second of the trailer for the next episode, so that bodes well !!!

5

5

Oxygen

Broadcast:
13th May 2017. BlipView written 14th May 2017.

Plot on a
pinhead: Space zombies! Yay!

Now this was a good one! From the outset it just had the right
look and feel of a very very good episode. It's the first one off this
series that I'd have liked to have been a 2-parter, though it did have a
kind-of cliff-hanger anyway so I'm happy with that. Must re-watch the
trailer for this episode from the last episode and see why I didn't
remember it!

This one had mood, menace and a very good storyline, how good is
that? It's even goodlier when characters other than the trio of regular
cast members turn up for the fun, and then the tension cranks up even
more.

The scene where Mr Blue (can't remember his name, did he have a
name?) confuses Bill's surprise at his blue colour into a form of
racism, this was so clever. Bill's stumbling over trying to reassure Mr
Blue that she's not racist is a gem. Bill is brilliant, keep her I say.
She's me fave companion since Donna Noble, Pearl is fantastic.
Keep her Chibnall, keep her!

I liked the Dr a lot in this one
too, Peter's Dr seemed more caring whilst at the same time coping with a lot
going on underneath. A very clever interpretation of the role in this
episode. Now it's finally sinking in that we've had a really good Dr and
now starting to miss him before he goes.

The effects of the humans becoming zombies was well achieved, the
dead stare was excellent, the zombie walking was so well choreographed,
the reason for the deaths was original and refreshing, the resolution
wholly satisfying. The whole thing was highly satisfying. Just a cotton
picking shame it hadn't been a 2-part story with more characters and
more tension over what happens if any of them get trapped anywhere. Very
good anyway.

This is the 3rd episode this particular writer's written that has
been creatively imaginative and this particular one felt so original and
so fresh.

The Dr going blind was well handled and very effective also, a
very clever way to go, another good reason why this one would have
worked even better as a 2-parter. But the final twist that the Dr is
still blind at the end of the episode, well I didn't see that coming!
Didn't see, geddit? Okay no doubt that was too obvious an obvious joke
but I'll take any humour at the moment over and above last night's
Eurovision Song Contest. Romania were robbed of victory and the winning
song was plain dull. Don't people know a good song when they hear it?
Yodle-a-hee-no.

8

6

Extremis

Broadcast:
20th May 2017. BlipView written 21st May 2017.

Plot on a
pinhead: Ooh it was a clever one. The Pope sends the Dr to look for a
book that, once read, makes people seemingly commit suicide, and the
Pope wants to know why they'd do this. Why he'd make the Dr read it is
perhaps open to discussion. Then it turns out that the world isn't real
so has any of this series been real? Wait, it's all fiction, forget it.

This was one of those where you watch for a while, think that
nothing's happening and then find out more's been going on than you
thought. I hadn't actually spotted who wrote this one (I'm trying not to
pay too much attention to who wrote / directed each episode 'cos I don't
want to have pre-conceived ideas about how much I'm likely to enjoy it)
but after a while I sensed a feeling of Moffatt's penmanship as it
became more and more clear how intelligent this one was.

I didn't really get all the stuff with the Pope and as to why the
Tardis gift of language translation didn't work upon this occasion, it
wasn't an ancient language he was speaking such as that back in The
Impossible Planet but then it wasn't real was it.

Having said that, if this is a hologram world how come the Veritas
exists? Why would it exist? Was that explained? No idea, you probably
paid more attention to that than me.

Loved the idea that this wasn't the real world, that this wasn't
the real Dr, Bill & Nardole, that was such a cool idea. Very original.
Still, it's about a book in a vast library and Steven's used a library
before in Silence In The Library, and that one involved a copy of
the world that wasn't real too, with Donna in the dream-like whatsit.
Still who cares? I enjoyed that one, I enjoyed this one.

The creatures represent a new menace in the series and it's about
time we had a new menace. Daleks, Cybermen & Ice Warriors are all good
and fine but we needed a new and nasty protagonist. It's nice to know
it's not just the Daleks who want to conquer humanity so I'm quite happy
for something different to come along.

The appearance of Missy was nice although that seems to tie up
exactly with who I thought was in the vault so I'm hoping there's still
some kind of twist to come once it's open. Maybe the Kandyman or Fifi
are in there with her, I'm holding out hope.

How had Missy got away from the Daleks, why was she to be
executed, I'm sure we'll never find out so let's move onto the Dr who
was brilliant in this. Peter C as the blind Dr is far more understated
and therefore greater than he's ever been, this is a great performance.
I love it in fact. Nardole's assistance is amusing as well as practical
and I'm really enjoying this series overall, it does feel quite fresh
and new.

I like the fact that the hologram Dr is able to text a message to
the real Dr along with a copy of the non-real book and I don't care that
there's absolutely no way this could happen and won't dwell too much on
the 'If he sends it from his un-real self won't it just come back to
him' dilemma and I suggest we all do the same.

Another reference to Star Trek this week (To Boldly Go.. last week
and Holodeck this week), have the production team been sneakily watching
programmes other than Who recently? Oh yes, apparently there are
programmes other than Who, but why?

Keep Bill, don't Kill Bill, she is just the best, she's an
uncomplicated companion but interesting by nature. A blooming good
performance. So far this has been a great last series for our Peter, and
we're already half way through. Now time seems to be marching too fast.

Well, let's see what the Space Monks get up to next week. These
aren't going to become the Headless Monks are they? Or The Silence /
Silents?

7

7

The Pyramid at the End of the World

If you run a Windows 10 update on your laptop and your wi-fi
connection disappears all you need to do is:

1) Connect via
cable from your wi-fi router to your laptop (to get a connection to
the internet)
2) Update your Wireless Network Adapter Driver (this may take a while)
and then your wi-fi should come back to life. Well it worked for me
anyway.
3) Restart your laptop anyway as this will make sure the laptop is
fully updated.
4) Then comes the fun bit. Once happy that all is working compose a
carefully constructed email to Microsoft beginning "Dear
Leave-It-To-Myself-To-Work-Out-Why-Your-Update-Made-My-Wireless-Disappear
Sirs or Madams, I'd like to express my delight at your clodhopping
skovoxblitzerpink upgrade for
firstly taking two hours to download/install then making my laptop
internet-unusable for longer than it takes to count the collective
amount of common sense amongst you." Then proceed to let forth to
include phrases such as "Why do your gunkmonkey updates not forewarn
us this might happen? And tell us how to sort it out should these
things happen?". A list of swear words and phrases for use in such an
email may be available on request. If I can be arsed.

And now I'm back online:

Broadcast:
27th May 2017. BlipView written 28th May 2017.

Plot on a pinhead: Space Monks offer to help Earth defeat a
bacteria that forms part of the 1% that Domestos cannot kill. They
have a Pyramid and everything.

With thanks to Arsenal winning 2-1 to Chelsea in the FA Cup
Final; didn't so much care who won but glad it didn't go to extra time
/ penalties as that would have meant Dr Who being delayed or
postponed.

Before watching this one I'd just told he who's named Andrew
O'Day who was my sole guest round me house last night that I was
actively trying not to know who was writing or directing each episode
in advance so that I wouldn't have pre-conceived ideas. He said "Okay,
let me tell you at what point I can recognise who's written this one".

The episode began, up came the caption "Previously:", seconds
later up came the caption "Now:" and Andrew chipped in "This point:
it's Moffat". How we both laughed out loud. Well I guess you had to be
there.

It was an unusual re-cap in that it combined clips from the
previous episode with new bits, wonder how many times in the history
of TV that's ever happened before.

Anyway, Space Monks turn up in a Pyramid and UNIT forget to
contact the Dr leaving it to the wider UN to get a hold of him via
Bill who should really be in the next series too as she's that good,
and she tootles off on a plane ride that ultimately gets her, the Dr &
Nardole to this Pyramid. Human and aliens have a good old chin-wag and
it's abundantly clear before long that this is going to be a
jump-around talky episode with lots of extras not doing much. Lots of
UN soldiers not shooting anything for instance.

Meanwhile in a lab a chap accidentally puts a decimal point in
the wrong place and creates a super bacteria that will wipe out
humanity and it's up to a blind Dr to sort it. He becomes un-blind at
the part of the script that calls for it and Earth is saved but with a
catch: Earth is now under control of the Space Monks.

A little while ago the Dr wanted mankind to make its own choice
about a creature under the Thames and previously about a creature
that's been hatched out of the Moon (if you haven't seen that one I'd
watch anything else instead) now in this one when mankind is
attempting to make its own decision the Dr is more than willing to
butt in. If I could work out the point I'm trying to make here I'd be
one up on the point of this episode which I struggled with. Someone in
the room I was in described the script as "Moffatt twaddle" which
wasn't me but I felt that this was perhaps a not-too-interesting
episode overall even with some fine actors who had lines to speak over
and above the regular cast.

I don't tend to favour scripts set here one second, there
another, eeny meenie miney mo and all that, and it felt like another
mish-mash of half-realised ideas. The superbug stuff should have been
more heavily played on once the jig was up, lots of deaths would have
served as a better threat. As it was, one person died before Bill
betrayed the entire world to save the Dr's eyesight to save the Dr's
life. Didn't really take to that.

There was something fresh different and clever about having the
Dr blind. He ain't blind now so am left wondering what the heck the
point of that was; not just so Bill could betray Earth to get the Dr's
eyesight back surely? And no I didn't call you Shirley.

Onto the trailer for next week, and it's a case of I Spy, with
my little Eye, something beginning with A, as in "I Spy A Plot Reset
Button Being Pressed Again with Everything Being Set Back To What It
Was Before" as the phrase "The Monks have always been here" sent a
shiver of The Big Bang and Last of the Timelords
familiarity up my spine. Yeesh.

5

8

The Lie of the Land

Broadcast:
3rd June 2017. BlipView written 4th June 2017.

Plot on a
pinhead: Nothing happens or at least nothing is seen to happen as
everything is reset at the end and humans have no memory of what
happened. Not for the first time since the series returned in 2005.

This one wasn't actually as terrible as I thought it was going to
be although the predictable 'six monks I mean six months later' and
total-reset scenarios did their best to make me go "Not again" again.
That aside, I just have one or two questions about this story, none of
which are probably worth mentioning, but really, you want to hear them?
Is that Bill's dead mum I'm speaking to? Okay Bill's dead mum, they are:

Why do the Monks use the Dr for the broadcasts?

Why do the Monks want Earth to think they the Monks have been a
part of Earth's history since forever?

Why is the Dr on a ship somewhere at sea to make the broadcasts?

Why does the Dr go all out to announce his arrival back on land
thus risking his plan of attack?

Why do the Space Monks need to use a fake copy of Earth in the
episode Extremis to work out Earth's weaknesses when nothing that
happens since bears any relation to that episode?

Why does the Dr pretend to begin to regenerate?

Why does Bill speak to her mother who died many years ago?

Why does Bill speaking to her dead mother save the Earth?

Why are there lots of soldiers not using guns once more?

Why is Missy, in any way, starting to feel remorse at who she's
killed? Why would she?

Plot on
a pinhead: Another clumsy Ice Warrior manages to crash-land on Earth and
this time takes some 19th Century soldiers back to Mars to find his Empress &
fellow warriors who've characteristically for Doctor Who been sleeping longer than
their alarm clock was set for. They just like sleeping don't they?
Whether it be in ice or now in some hive thing. Cue some arguing between
humans and Ice Warriors and once again everybody ends up being friends
just in time for next week's trailer.

The NASA stuff felt embarrassing to watch, why were the Dr & co
there anyway, it felt like a forced scene that had been tacked on at the
beginning. Had that shot of the message on Mars been at the end of a
previous episode where the Dr & friends had been involved in a story set
at NASA and thus leading onto this adventure, well that would have been
a whole different ball game. So it all felt like a very rushed clumsy
reason to get the Dr & chums to Mars. Couldn't they have just landed
on Mars, seen some soldiers in caves, assumed they were on earth then,
gasp! find out they're on Mars instead?

Equally rushed was the explanation of why there were 19th Century
soldiers on Mars. This would have been better as a 2-parter where such
explanations could have been better paced. Pretty much like everything
else: suddenly the Empress is awake after 5000 years (why?), suddenly
the Ice Warriors are being revived, the man in charge is no longer
in charge, now he's back in charge, now he's a supposed coward, now he's
a brave warrior; if he's a deserter how the heck is he in charge in the
first place? Does that ever happen in the army, didn't it become popular
to shoot deserters? When t'Empress questions whether she has revived
enough warriors and guesses the ones she has will do for now you think
well it's only taken you a few seconds to revive these ones so why not
revive a bunch more?

Ice Warriors do like sleeping don't they? At least three of their
televised stories have been based on Warriors being in some form of
suspended animation, and why were they asleep in this one? The
competition between the Silurians, Sea Devils and Ice Warriors for
longest deep sleep looks set to continue for some time to come.
What if we sleep through the result.

Not sure why an Empress was a big deal (necessity) for the plot or
why she was so interested in what Bill had to say over and above the
men, is she gender-ist, didn't get the point of that. But then I'm only
a man and couldn't be expected to understand such things as that. And
what's this hive thing all about? Ice Warriors? Hive? Ice Warriors in a hive? Nah, I
don't buy that, least, not without an explanation.

Nice to see a picture of Pauline Collins dressed up as Queen
Victoria in a photo on Mars, it's these kinds of touches that remind you
how good the RTD years were heh heh. No, seriously, it was a gentle
tender nod to a previous story and it worked nicely. "Sleep no more!"
exclaims the Queen Empress in a knowing nod to last year's story of the
same name written by the same person as this one. Made me chuckle that
did.

As to why the Tardis wanted Nardole to go and fetch Missy is a
mystery that's either likely to be explained quickly in the next episode or just as likely
quickly moved on from (was Missy in the trailer for next week, don't
think so) but it's an interesting one.

Towards the end anticipation grew as the Dr sent out a distress
message for reasons only the script knows, it grew because as a viewer I
was thinking "Please let it be you know who that responds, please..."
and it blooming well was! Alpha Centauri you absolute beauty, welcome
back after all these years. I don't care if Alpha has a phallus-like
appearance, it was good to see and hear him/her. The original voice
actor too! Fantastic! This was the moment of the series for me and
raised this episode to a very special warm place in my heart. It was a
moment that casual viewers would have taken with a pinch of instantly
forgotten salt but for us long-term fans it was a glorious golden moment
in Who history.

Overall I thought this was a great episode that would have
benefited from having a second episode, it was that good.

8

10

The Eaters of Light

Now if only this episode had been the second part of last week's
story instead of a new story, *sigh*.

Broadcast:
17th June 2017. BlipView written 18th June 2017.

Plot on a pinhead: Another gateway on Earth leading to other
dimensions, another creature attempting to get through from it, some
Romans, some crows along with an explanation as to why they caw, and a
bit of Missy.

I found this dull. Some good direction in places though, Nardole
was fun too. Mostly filmed on location also and there was some
atmosphere. It was dull though. Lots of angst, a bit about foes coming
together to defeat a bigger enemy, the Dr about to do the right thing,
humans doing the right thing instead, it just seemed all, well, weakly
executed to me. Maybe it was just the script I didn't take to but for me
this is the weak one of the series.

When the plot ran out there was some stuff with Missy which wasn't
too interesting either and the trailer for next week indicated a small
cast in peril in a flat looking set of clips.

4

11

World Enough and Time

Broadcast:
24th June 2017. BlipView written 24th June 2017.

Plot on
a pinhead: Genesis of the Cybermen and when The Master met Missy.

Wow did you see this one? It was so good wasn't it? I didn't even
spot that it was The Master underneath that disguise either so if only
we hadn't known John Simm was going to turn up 'cos that would have been
even better!

The death of Bill was well done and likely to remain a big memory
of any younger viewers watching. She'll be back to her old self by the
end of the next episode though, if the Dr can resurrect Nardole who's a
cyborg he can do it for Bill.

The science of time running at different speeds at different ends
of the ship due to the gravitational pull of the black hole was highly
believable and just wonderful. We'll forget that the Dr could have moved
from one end of the ship to the other in the Tardis and travelled back
in time and look at the fact he's named Doctor Who. I loved all of this,
it felt right to me. Thank you Steven that was a perfect idea.

The gradual build up of the almost humans into proto-Cybermen into
Cybermen was well done and the atmosphere for this episode was just
about perfect. Perhaps if there had been other characters who
disappeared along the way that could have added to this but overall I'm
just quibbling for nothing because I loved what we were given.

It came as no surprise that Bill was the Cyberman especially as a
Jackie Tyler, The Brigadier and Danny Pink had previously been converted
but I can't see that Bill will remain one.

Missy was wonderful and the Master was just as wonderful. He ain't
gonna like what he's become I suspect even if they seem to be teaming up
at the end of that episode.

Where's it all going to end eh? A lot to speculate on and I'm not
going to do much of that here, I'd hate to be anywhere near right.

I think the trailer for next week showed the two types of Cybermen
that have appeared since the series return in 2005 as well as the creepy
Mondas Cybermen who I love. Should be interesting. Not many human type
characters for them to be defeated by though I suspect.

Talking of Mondas Cybermen the voices were spot on, so glad
they're similar to The Tenth Planet voices and not a re-worked
version. "Pain. Pain. Pain.." just brilliant intelligent writing here.

Wasn't sure why there was a cityscape on the ship but once again
this is a tiny matter.

It was a near-perfect episode and I just hope it all holds
together for the next, final, hour long finale.

That was
just about the best, perfect episode ever, incredibly moving, very
creepy, very intense, there are simply not enough words to justify or
encapsulate what I saw.

Plot on a pinhead: The Dr wins the day but doesn't want to carry
on in what is an epoch moment.

Bill's plight was so affecting, she's just too good a character to
feel anything other than total loss that she's gone, of how Bill must
have felt at her situation of not being human anymore. Completely
heartbreaking stuff. Those Cybermen sure have a way of creating dark
moments for the Dr and his friends, Adric not forgotten. The children
being scared of Bill was just tear-jerking, yet conversely helped make
the episode brilliant because of this.

Seeing Bill see herself as human emphasised just how awful Bill's
situation was and in itself was enough to have me feeling intensely sad
for her. Such a wonderful created performance from such a bright star
that is Pearl Mackie.

The mention of Marinus was very nice, touching on a Doctor Who
Magazine comic strip that had Voord becoming Cybermen and that was
just one of a staggering amount of fantastic moments in this quite
senses-bewildering masterpiece.

Nardole finally had his day, becoming mentor and father-like
figure to the band of humans he so carefully looked after, I loved this
aspect of the story. It was touching on pathos which in fiction is a
plot device I particularly enjoy. Matt Lucas was an addition to the
series that I welcomed and I am pleased his character has got a possibly
happy ending.

Missy was clearly torn between being her old bad self and of
helping the Dr and it was an astonishing Dr-free moment that saw the
Master and Missy end each other's existence. Surprising and brilliant.
Is Missy dead? Wow. Somehow I thought the Dr would be there at the end
but wow.

The guest cast were excellent and one hopes Nardole has found his
life partner, as with Bill and hers. I couldn't believe how happy I was
that Bill was helped back to a third existence for her, this time with a
real sense that she could ultimately be happy. Very intelligently
written and superbly put across on screen.

The direction was simply immaculate throughout, a level of high
professionalism displayed on a truly creative scale, very film-like and
with a score that simply underscored the brilliance of this episode. The
music score as with the direction was in a league above anything I can
remember in Who and that music is going to remain etched in my mind.

"You may be a Doctor but I am The Doctor", a fantastic almost
joke-y line when uttered by Tom Baker's Doctor in Robot, here used to
brilliant effect both times we hear it. Both times we hear it there is
no denying the unmistakeable belief that this is the absolute truth. A
line uttered in perfection by both Peter Capaldi and David Bradley. And
how good to see David Bradley confirming all the rumours I'd been trying
to avoid, there is so much already to look forward to and and fear the
end of for the Christmas episode.

A lot of this appeared to be filmed on location and it was just
too perfect, we've been waiting for an episode this good for a very long
time.

Even whilst writing this I've had messages from a number of people
saying how much they liked this episode and I cannot even begin to say
just how much I agree with them. Excellent effects throughout, those
explosions are the biggest we've seen aren't they, a million miles away
from the explosions in Battlefield all those years ago.

There's a real sense of loss at this Tardis team splitting to go
their individual ways, it's so sad that we're losing all three
characters in quick succession, Bill will be missed so much, Nardole
will be missed and Peter Capaldi's Doctor will be hard to say goodbye to
at all he's become that good. 'Good', what an ineffective way to
describe the power of Peter's Doctor when he tells the Master and Missy
to listen to him, how he explains why he does what he does, the power of
having taken his Dr from a tetchy cuddle-free Dr in Deep Breath
to this highly emotive and frankly heroic Dr.

"And above all, it's kind. It's just that. Just kind." One of the
most simple philosophies to live by and what a beautiful simple message
from the Doctor. Why be cruel just because you are powerful? Be kind. I
loved that speech, it's at the core of the Doctor and it hides under the
mask the Doctor often shows. It's an exquisite speech and through its
beautiful simplicity is utterly powerful but kind. The Doctor doesn't
want enemies of Missy and the Master, he wants them to see that
friendship is better, for them all to stand together, but he'll never
know that Missy was on her way back to stand side-by-side with him, how
painfully touching that was.

This Doctor doesn't want to regenerate a la Master in Last of
the Timelords and it's all so effectively real and captivating.
There'll be a point where there'll be no Doctor and it will likely be
because the doctor himself makes that choice. The weight of the
multi-verse on his shoulders, the loss of friends and of having to try
not to feel emotions to keep himself from bursting, all of that played
out in this episode and it was nigh on impossible not to get caught up
in that. What a brilliant Doctor Peter Capaldi has made, what skilful
brilliant writing Steven Moffat has provided.

I could go on and on about how perfect each and every nuance of
script was, how perfect every tweak of every actor's believable
character was, but the words fail me and this is one of those times I
wish they wouldn't. This was just brilliant and I can only mourn that
there is not much more of this to come.

Thank you Steven, thank you Peter, thank you Pearl, thank you
Matt, thank you Michelle, thank you John.

Plot on a pinhead: The First and (at least) Twelfth Drs decide they
don't want to regenerate and go wandering around looking for a sparse
plot for 45 minutes before deciding they may as well regenerate.

An okay if strangely drawn out episode that feels a weak coda to
the previous two episodes and a weak coda to what had been a
strengthened era over the last two series.

Performances were good from both Peter Capaldi and David Bradley
with some good lines thrown in along the way to show how different the
Dr has become but dialogue seemed to engulf the episode and the
chit-chats between the various characters just seemed to be
never-ending.

The plot itself was just trivial and almost completely unnecessary
to the episode; with or without the glass creatures what would have
actually altered the Drs choice to regenerate? It all seemed a bit flat
that there was no menace, no big reason that the Drs might actually want
to regenerate.

Were Bill and Nardole real or not, no idea, it was all lost in the
chit-chat. I think they are dead so feel right to mourn their loss in
the previous episode. The re-appearance of Clara was probably a nice
touch but once again, real, unreal, what? Didn't mean a thing in
whatever context it was used here.

The battlefield scenes were nicely done and even though one could
see the Lethbridge-Stewart connection coming a mile off I still liked it
and Mark Gatiss played a good though small and otherwise insignificant
character in this small-cast episode.

It all just seemed to be too long and drawn out. I prefer the days
of Pertwee being irradiated, Tom Baker falling, Davison bravely saving
his companion at the cost of his own life then quickly
regenerating, to this kind of "I'm going to regenerate but in my own
time" method adopted since the end of the Tennant era. It's dull. Let's
have a heroic save followed by a swift regeneration in future. Had
Capaldi regenerated at the end of the previous episode it would have
felt a whole lot more satisfying if sadder.

Jodi Whittaker didn't get much to say in her first appearance so
one will wait for the next series to see just what the future holds. The
Tardis rejecting her Doctor is an interesting way to introduce a new Dr
so it could be a jumpstart to a different kind of series. No doubt a few
clever people will say that typically a woman's taken over the Tardis
and crashed it within minutes but not me no way.

Goodbye Peter Capaldi, Pearl Mackie and Matt Lucas, you will all
be missed.

It's the last Steven Moffat episode both as writer and show runner
and he has been the only writer I can think of to write episodes for ten
consecutive series (Robert Holmes wrote for more series over a longer
time) and he has written some incredibly good episodes over that time.
The strange genius he has for writing cleverly-woven intricate
storylines is his true masterpiece and I hope he continues to write for
many other wide and varied projects. From Coupling to Jekyll
to Sherlock to Doctor Who, it's been fun so far. Robert
Holmes wrote some of my favourite Who's such as Spearhead from Space,
Ark In Space, Caves of Androzani, and he also managed to
write one of my least favourite stories, The Two Doctors.
Steven's managed to write some of my favourites such as Blink,
Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, World Enough and Time/The Doctor
Falls and one or two I haven't liked so much. But as with Holmes
he's right up there with the best of the best and am grateful for the
time he committed to the show. Thank you Steven.

I try not to be influenced by fans' opinions of Who and since the
early '90s I generally have little to do with fandom so these random
thoughts presented on this page are simply what I feel as a long-time
viewer. Negatives without purpose are something I've tried to avoid here
and regardless of who the next 30-50 Doctors are played by, no matter
who the show runners are I'll continue to express my own thoughts and
feelings as a lifetime viewer. I'll try to, as a good wordsmith recently had the
Doctor say, be kind.

A good start to a new series and has a completely different feel
from the previous series (and many series before that). Likeable Dr,
good companions, easy to follow plot. Nice.

6

2

The Ghost Monument

Broadcast: 14th October 2018

Turned out to be the Tardis
didn't it? Still, another likeable episode

7

3

Rosa

Broadcast: 21st October 2018

Very different, very well
acted, I suspect I will love this more on repeated viewing.

8

4

Arachnids In The UK

Broadcast: 28th October 2018

This should have been a 2-parter.

Good effects, some suspense, some good
snippets with Bradley and his fictional dead wife, there wasn't an alien
menace for once along with a nice ending where the three new friends ask
to come along with the Dr.

Was at once both rushed and drawn out;
rushed when it came to sorting out the menace (blink, missed it), and
dull as anything when involving the businessman (zzzzzz).

Had it been a 2-parter perhaps more build up
could have occurred rather than have the neighbour be directly involved
or the mother being at exactly the right place for the plot to happen.
Too coincidental and too small a world: "All of time and space...".

The Dr suddenly wants to go for tea, doesn't
happen often does it and I was bemused by the sudden neediness of the Dr
at that point.

The spiders are left to die in a room if I
remember right, whilst the cast show angst at the businessman shooting a
dying spider. Eh? Did all the big spiders that were loose in the city
come implausibly pied-piping to the hotel to hear the song or was this
part of the plot completely forgotten about?

I was bored in places but were I a lot
younger I would probably remember the spider scenes vividly. For me as
an adult, half
good, half dull.

I guess new Who
as a series will never appeal to me as much as old Who as it doesn't
have cliff hangers or the same kind of pace or even put plot over soap.
New Who obsession regarding us getting to know companions' families
doesn't appeal to me as I prefer sci-fi plot over soap; just get on with
an exciting story.

I've stuck with
the series because I've watched it since I was a child but I don't
think I'm ever going to be fully satisfied by New Who (seasons 3 and 4
aside), and am actually growing dissatisfied with it. The whole is not
greater than the sum of its parts and I'm finding I'm not that excited
about the series anymore. The old stuff still grabs me but I'm becoming
disenchanted with the modern.

5

5

The Tsuranga Conundrum

And then along came this one which had me
laughing out loud at the Pting's antics, it was quite a different take
on the 'base under siege' idea.

I
wasn't too fussed about the gubbins between the brother & sister or the
pregnant man (yawn) but over all I liked this one. The set design was
beautiful, an excellent job done there and Bradley's Graham is a mighty
fine companion friend.

Wasn't sure what the idea behind the Dr not
feeling well was as it didn't seem to have any effect on the story but
loved the Pting so it all balances out doesn't it.

Just gimme back the cliff hangers and give
us a real epic and that would be even better.

6

6

Demons of the Punjab

Zzzzzzzz

"This is the best thing ever" was not a line that fitted this episode
well.

Even Bradley Walsh couldn't save this one.

Not so much a pseudo historical as a pseudo
science fiction story. Aliens? Irrelevant to the plot. The Dr?
Irrelevant to the plot. Companions? Irrelevant to the plot. Not Dr Who
by any standards. Just very dull in spite of a good guest cast.

Looked nice though.

1

7

Kerblam!

This were a goodun, nicely structured, nicely
paced, an interesting menace, great atmosphere.

7

8

The Witchfinders

I liked this one a lot.

I did think the King might turn out to be a new
version of The Master but yay, nay, it was all good and highly
enjoyable. The episode seemed to last a long time it seemed to have much
in it but never felt rushed. An episode that was bigger on the inside.
Had hoped along the way that it might be a 2-parter but hey ho :)

Had also thought it might be a pure historical
but it wasn't. It worked anyway.

Great guest cast, great production values,
great entertainment.

One small point; rarely seem to see Yaz
smile, all her lines seem to be serious ones, maybe a few light moments
here and there would be good.

9

9

It Takes You Away

Once again, nicely made, good guest cast, some
atmosphere. I liked that there was a danger that turned out not to be a
real danger alongside a seemingly safe parallel world that was anything
but.

The frog CGI was
interestingly poorly realised but this somehow added to the charm for me
and I like this story more days after viewing it.

6

10

The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos

What battle?

A mildly underwhelming episode in which 2
long-lived creatures are very easily convinced by an alien that he is
their god and just as easily convinced by another alien in conversation
that they are not.

Graham's dilemma was mildly interesting and
one wondered if he'd survive the episode which he thankfully did.

The return of Tim Shaw was probably of no
surprise and of little interest to myself; hardly Davros, The Master,
Weng-Chiang or Sharaz Jek is he? He's a small-time villain hardly worthy
of a return visit. Still, he'll be back again. Wow.

An underwhelming episode of little incident
and little interest. Not the kind of series ending we're used to for
Doctor Who (or a lot of drama series in this age), a very
run-of-the-mill affair that's just, well, average at best.

There was a character named Tim Shaw in the
series Jupiter Moon, was this Stenza named after him?

5
(but only just)

11

Resolution

Quite nicely done I thought. I liked it.

The possessed / trapped human bits worked well,
I liked the 'cobbled together' Dalek and it was different. I also liked
that the Dalek spoke less robotic when outside the casing, I was happy
with it laughing.

The only bits of the episode that dragged
where when long scenes between Ryan's dad and other characters took
place, whilst scenes relating to plot were much shorter (or felt that
way anyway). Brevity would have been a better tool to use than unceasing
dialogue. As soon as the doorbell went I groaned and instantly thought
"It's Ryan's dad". But this stuff aside I liked a lot of what I saw.

8

Season 11 Overview

Not the worst of series, not
the best. I compare it to how I felt about the 1970s Graham Williams era
at the time; watchable but underwhelming. There's no Genesis Of The
Daleks, Earthshock or A Time of Angels for this new
Doctor, simply a run of fairly average, indifferent stories for the most
part. Rosa, Kerblam! and The Witchfinders were good
though, and the Pting was a hoot in The Tsuranga Conundrum. Jodi
and Bradley are excellent, Tosin is really good and Mandip hasn't been
given a lot to do. Even in Demons of the Punjab Yas seemed to be
in the background. I remain indifferent to Yas as a result and that's a
shame.

Can I ask for a frightening
Auton story for the next series, to be titled Yas And The Plastic
Population? No? Oh well.

Doctor Who First Series - The
Definitive Harris Guide

A positive tick indicates whether I feel a full
series / season each Dr first appears in is at least great.

People stop dying: not a great hook for a series. Turns the old
'world's population in peril from being killed' scenario upside down
(no one is in peril) and is all the less interesting for it.

5

2

Rendition

Not much sci-fi here, and why does this series feel like it's
more padding than plot?

5

3

Dead of Night

Immensely dull: the whole
government-agency-with-people-working-for-the-bad-guys shtick has
been done to death in many other series (24 in particular).

2

4

Escape to L.A.

Hello, this has started to get interesting now: even Oswald
Danes seems to have a proper place in this plot now. I can live
without all the family plots going on though: father, sister, nieces,
husband, father - borrrrring! Bring on the sci-fi!

7

5

The Categories of Life

Back to being dull. There's a real sense that this could all
have been done a lot faster.

5

6

The Middle Men

Really losing interest now, much as I like Jack, Gwen, Rex and
Esther.

5

7

Immortal Sins

An interminable time spent showing what went on with Jack and
what's-is-name in 1920s New York. The scenes between Jack and Gwen
were good though.

6

8

End of the Road

Another episode that seemed not to have much to do with the
actual plot: Jack's New York boyfriend not dead, then is dead, so
what? Alien technology under the floorboards, so what?

6

9

The Gathering

The Blessing looks visually unimpressive but finally, finally,
the plot is building to some kind of climax. Whatever this has
actually been about.

7

10

The Bloodline

If this had been the last part of a tight 5 part
series I would have said how brilliant the series was. As it stands,
this is simply a brilliant episode at the end of a sedentary, almost
somnambulist bore.

Although Jack has been shown to come back
from the dead many times this episode has such a fatalistic feel that
I doubted that this would happen this time. I was also surprised to
see Rex come back to life, but the episode runs at such a pace that
even something that perhaps in retrospect seemed 'obvious', was a
complete and welcome event.

I'd been expecting Rex to die at the end of this series, I was
surprised it turned out to be Esther. Now that Rex lives as Jack
lives, could it mean there's now debate as to who becomes The Face of
Boe that we saw in Doctor Who? Although Jack refers to his
nickname as being that, hmm, maybe there are two big heads who live
for billions of years?

My only negative against this episode is that the Three
Families, a dull enemy, lives to plot further dullness. This was
something I'd been dreading would happen and should they be involved
in any future series this would not endear me to it. That brings it
further into typical TV thriller territory and I'd prefer Torchwood to
stick to it's alien background that suggests 'this is where it all
changes'.

It seems Torchwood faces yet another uncertain future, even
before the series began I sensed this may be the last we see, it
always seems to be a programme that has to fight for its existence. I
really hope this wasn't the last series because in spite of the
tremendous cast it was a flat experience overall, and I'd want
Torchwood to get back to the greatness of series 2 and 3. More sci-fi,
less typical thriller.

If Torchwood were to return with a new series I'd hope it would
consist of more than one story; 4 or 5 part stories would be great,
but a 10 part story has to contain more than episodes relating to
plane journeys, car journeys and alien technology under the
floorboards.